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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 

Mrs.  David  Atkins 


THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

THE  PROBABLE   FUTURE  OF  MANKIND 


By 
H.  G.  WELLS 


BEALBY 

GOD,  THE  INVISIBLE  KING 

IN  THE  FOURTH  YEAR 

ITALY,  PRANCE,  AND   BRITAIN  AT 

WAR 
JOAN   AND    PETER 
MR.  BRITLING   SEES  IT  THROUGH 
NEW  WORLDS   FOR   OLD 
THE  RESEARCH  MAGNIFICENT 
THE  SOUL  OF  A  BISHOP 
THE  UNDYING  FIRE 
WHAT   IS   COMING? 
THE  WIFE  OF  SIR  ISAAC  HARMAN 
THE    OUTLINE   OF  HISTORY 


THE  SALVAGING   OF 
CIVILIZATION 

THE 

PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF 

MANKIND 

BY 

H.  G.  WELLS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1922 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


COPYRIGHT,    1921, 

By  H.  G.  WELLS. 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  May,  1921. 


m  1  \  1924 
495645 


Add' I 


GIFT 


FBRfUS 

PRINTING    COMPANY 
NEW  YORK    CITY 


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THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

THE  PROBABLE   FUTUHE  OF  MANKIND 


389 


THE  SALVAGING  OF 
CIVILIZATION 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND* 

The  present  outlook  of  human  affairs  is  one  that 
admits  of  broad  generalizations  and  that  seems  to 
require  broad  generalizations.  We  are  in  one  of 
those  phases  of  experience  which  become  cardinal 
in  history.  A  series  of  immense  and  tragic  events 
have  shattered  the  self-complacency  and  chal- 
lenged the  will  and  intelligence  of  mankind.  That 
easy  general  forward  movement  of  human  affairs 
which  for  several  generations  had  seemed  to  jus- 
tify the  persuasion  of  a  necessary  and  invincible 
progress,  progress  towards  greater  powers, 
greater  happiness,  and  a  continual  enlargement  of 
life,  has  been  checked  violently  and  perhaps  ar- 
rested altogether.  The  spectacular  catastrophe  of 
the  great  war  has  revealed  an  accumulation  of 
destructive  forces  in  our  outwardly  prosperous 
society,  of  which  few  of  us  had  dreamt ;  and  it  has 

*  First  published  in  the  Review  of  Reviews. 

1 


2  THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

also  revealed  a  profound  incapacity  to  deal  with 
and  restrain  these  forces.  The  two  years  of  want, 
confusion,  and  indecision  that  have  followed  the 
great  war  in  Europe  and  Asia,  and  the  uncertain- 
ties that  have  disturbed  life  even  in  the  compara- 
tively untouched  American  world,  seem  to  many 
watchful  minds  even  more  ominous  to  our  social 
order  than  the  war  itself.  What  is  happening  to 
our  race  ?  they  ask.  Did  the  prosperities  and  con- 
fident hopes  with  which  the  twentieth  century 
opened,  mark  nothing  more  than  a  culmination  of 
fortuitous  good  luck?  Has  the  cycle  of  prosperity 
and  progress  closed  ?  To  what  will  this  staggering 
and  blundering,  the  hatreds  and  mischievous  ad- 
ventures of  the  present  time,  bring  us?  Is  the 
world  in  the  opening  of  long  centuries  of  confusion 
and  disaster  such  as  ended  the  Western  Eoman 
Empire  in  Europe  or  the  Han  prosperity  in  China? 
And  if  so,  will  the  debacle  extend  to  America!  Or 
is  the  American  (and  Pacific?)  system  still  suffi- 
ciently removed  and  still  sufficiently  autonomous 
to  maintain  a  progressive  movement  of  its  own  if 
the  Old  World  collapse? 

Some  sort  of  answer  to  these  questions,  vast  and 
vague  though  they  are,  we  must  each  one  of  us 
have  before  we  can  take  an  intelligent  interest 
or  cast  an  effective  vote  in  foreign  affairs.  Even 
though  a  man  formulate  no  definite  answer,  he 
must  still  have  an  implicit  persuasion  before  he 
can  act  in  these  matters.  If  he  have  no  clear 
conclusions  openly  arrived  at,  then  he  must  act 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND  3 

upon  subconscious  conclusions  instinctively  ar- 
rived at  Far  better  is  it  that  he  should  bring  them 
into  the  open  light  of  thought. 

The  suppression  of  war  is  generally  regarded  as 
central  to  the  complex  of  contemporary  problems. 
But  war  is  not  a  new  thing  in  human  experience, 
and  for  scores  of  centuries  mankind  has  managed 
to  get  along  in  spite  of  its  frequent  recurrence. 
Most  states  and  empires  have  been  intermittently 
at  war  throughout  their  periods  of  stability  and 
prosperity.  But  their  warfare  was  not  the  warfare 
of  the  present  time.  The  thing  that  has  brought 
the  rush  of  progressive  development  of  the  past 
century  and  a  half  to  a  sudden  shock  of  arrest  is 
not  the  old  and  familiar  warfare,  but  warfare 
strangely  changed  and  exaggerated  by  novel  con- 
ditions. It  is  this  change  in  conditions,  therefore, 
and  not  war  itself,  which  is  the  reality  we  have  to 
analyze  in  its  bearing  upon  our  social  and  political 
ideas.  In  1914  the  European  Great  Powers  re- 
sorted to  war,  as  they  had  resorted  to  war  on  many 
previous  occasions,  to  decide  certain  open  issues. 
This  war  flamed  out  with  an  unexpected  rapidity 
until  all  the  world  was  involved ;  and  it  developed 
a  horror,  a  monstrosity  of  destructiveness,  and, 
above  all,  an  inconclusiveness  quite  unlike  any 
preceding  war.  That  unlikeness  was  the  essence 
of  the  matter.  "Whatever  justifications  could  be 
found  for  its  use  in  the  past,  it  became  clear  to 
many  minds  that  under  the  new  conditions  war 
was  no  longer  a  possible  method  of  international 


4  THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

dealing.  The  thing  lay  upon  the  surface.  The 
idea  of  a  League  of  Nations  sustaining  a  Supreme 
World  Court  to  supersede  the  arbitrament  of  war, 
did  not  so  much  arise  at  any  particular  point  as 
break  out  simultaneously  wherever  there  were 
intelligent  men. 

Now  what  was  this  change  in  conditions  that 
had  confronted  mankind  with  the  perplexing 
necessity  of  abandoning  war?  For  perplexing  it 
certainly  is.  "War  has  been  a  ruling  and  con- 
structive idea  in  all  human  societies  up  to  the 
present  time;  few  will  be  found  to  deny  it. 
Political  institutions  have  very  largely  developed 
in  relation  to  the  idea  of  war;  defence  and 
aggression  have  shaped  the  outer  form  of  every 
state  in  the  world,  just  as  co-operation  sustained 
by  compulsion  has  shaped  its  inner  organization. 
And  if  abruptly  man  determines  to  give  up  the 
waging  of  war,  he  may  find  that  this  determination 
involves  the  most  extensive  and  penetrating  modi- 
fications of  political  and  social  conceptions  that  do 
not  at  the  first  glance  betray  any  direct  connection 
with  belligerent  activities  at  all. 

It  is  to  the  general  problem  arising  out  of  this 
consideration,  that  this  and  the  three  following 
essays  will  be  addressed ;  the  question :  What  else 
has  to  go  if  war  is  to  go  out  of  human  life?  and 
the  problem  of  what  has  to  be  done  if  it  is  to  be 
banished  and  barred  out  for  ever  from  the  future 
experiences  of  our  race.    For  let  us  face  the  truth 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND      5 

in  this  matter;  the  abolition  of  war  is  no  casting 
of  ancient,  barbaric,  and  now  obsolete  traditions, 
no  easy  and  natural  progressive  step ;  the  abolition 
of  war,  if  it  can  be  brought  about,  will  be  a  reversal 
not  only  of  the  general  method  of  human  life 
hitherto  but  of  the  general  method  of  nature,  the 
method,  that  is,  of  conflict  and  survival.  It  will 
be  a  new  phase  in  the  history  of  life,  and  not 
simply  an  incident  in  the  history  of  man.  These 
brief  essays  will  attempt  to  present  something 
like  the  true  dimensions  of  the  task  before  man- 
kind if  war  is  indeed  to  be  superseded,  and  to  show 
that  the  project  of  abolishing  war  by  the  oc- 
casional meeting  of  some  Council  of  a  League  of 
Nations  or  the  like,  is,  in  itself,  about  as  likely  to 
succeed  as  a  proposal  to  abolish  thirst,  hunger, 
and  death  by  a  short  legislative  act. 

Let  us  first  examine  the  change  in  the  conditions 
of  human  life  that  has  altered  war  from  a  normal 
aspect  of  the  conflict  for  existence  of  human  so- 
cieties into  a  terror  and  a  threat  for  the  entire 
species.  The  change  is  essentially  a  change  in  the 
amount  of  power  available  for  human  purposes, 
and  more  particularly  in  the  amount  of  material 
power  that  can  be  controlled  by  one  individual. 
Human  society  up  to  a  couple  of  centuries  ago 
was  essentially  a  man-power  and  horse-power 
system.  There  was  in  addition  a  certain  limited 
use  of  water  power  and  wind  power,  but  that  was 
not  on  a  scale  to  affect  the  general  truth  of  the 
proposition.     The  first  intimation  of  the  great 


6  THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

change  began  seven  centuries  ago  with  the  appear- 
ance of  explosives.  In  the  thirteenth  century  the 
Mongols  made  a  very  effective  military  use  of  the 
Chinese  discovery  of  gunpowder.  They  conquered 
most  of  the  known  world,  and  their  introduction 
of  a  low-grade  explosive  in  warfare  rapidly  de- 
stroyed the  immunity  of  castles  and  walled  cities, 
abolished  knighthood,  and  utterly  wrecked  and 
devastated  the  irrigation  system  of  Mesopotamia, 
which  had  been  a  populous  and  civilized  region 
since  before  the  beginnings  of  history.  But  the 
restricted  metallurgical  knowledge  of  the  time  set 
definite  limits  to  the  size  and  range  of  cannon.  It 
was  only  with  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  large 
scale  production  of  cast  steel  and  the  growth  of 
chemical  knowledge  made  the  military  use  of  a 
variety  of  explosives  practicable.  The  systematic 
extension  of  human  power  began  in  the  eighteenth 
century  with  the  utilization  of  steam  and  coal. 
That  opened  a  crescendo  of  invention  and  dis- 
covery which  thrust  rapidly  increasing  quantities 
of  material  energy  into  men's  hands.  Even  now 
that  crescendo  may  not  have  reached  its  climax. 

We  need  not  rehearse  here  the  familiar  story 
of  the  abolition  of  distance  that  ensued;  how  the 
radiogram  and  the  telegram  have  made  every 
event  of  importance  a  simultaneous  event  for  the 
minds  of  everyone  in  the  world,  how  journeys 
which  formerly  took  months  or  weeks  now  take 
days  or  hours,  nor  how  printing  and  paper  have 
made  possible  a  universally  informed  community, 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND         7 

and  so  forth.  Nor  will  we  describe  the  effect  of 
these  things  upon  warfare.  The  point  that  con- 
cerns us  here  is  this,  that  before  this  age  of  dis- 
covery, communities  had  fought  and  struggled 
with  each  other  much  as  naughty  children  might 
do  in  a  crowded  nursery,  within  the  measure  of 
their  strength.  They  had  hurt  and  impoverished 
each  other,  but  they  had  rarely  destroyed  each 
other  completely.  Their  squabbles  may  have  been 
distressing,  but  they  were  tolerable.  It  is  even 
possible  to  regard  these  former  wars  as  healthy, 
hardening  and  invigorating  conflicts.  But  into 
this  nursery  has  come  Science,  and  has  put  into 
the  fists  of  these  children  razor  blades  with  poison 
on  them,  bombs  of  frightful  explosive,  corrosive 
fluids  and  the  like.  The  comparatively  harmless 
conflicts  of  these  infants  are  suddenly  fraught  with 
quite  terrific  possibilities,  and  it  is  only  a  question 
of  sooner  or  later  before  the  nursery  becomes  a 
heap  of  corpses  or  is  blown  to  smithereens.  A 
real  nursery  invaded  by  a  reckless  person  dis- 
tributing such  gifts,  would  be  promptly  saved  by 
the  intervention  of  the  nurse;  but  humanity  has 
no  nurse  but  its  own  poor  wisdom.  And  whether 
that  poor  wisdom  can  rise  to  the  pitch  of  effectual 
intervention  is  the  most  fundamental  problem  in 
mundane  affairs  at  the  present  time. 

The  deadly  gifts  continue.  There  was  a  steady 
increase  in  the  f rightfulness  a»d  destrucfeivejiess 
of  belligerence  from  1914  up  to  thp  begianing  of 
1#18,    wne~n    shortage    of   material    an3    energy 


8  THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

checked  the  process ;  and  since  the  armistice  there 
has  been  an  industrious  development  of  military 
science.  The  next  well-organized  war,  we  are  as- 
sured, will  be  far  more  swift  and  extensive  in  its 
destruction — more  particularly  of  the  civilian 
population.  Armies  will  advance  no  longer  along 
roads  but  extended  in  line,  with  heavy  tank 
transport  which  will  plough  up  the  entire  surface 
of  the  land  they  traverse;  aerial  bombing,  with 
bombs*  each  capable  of  destroying  a  small  town, 
will  be  practicable  a  thousand  miles  beyond  the 
military  front,  and  the  seas  will  be  swept  clear  of 
shipping  by  mines  and  submarine  activities. 
There  will  be  no  distinction  between  combatants 
and  non-combatants,  because  every  able-bodied 
citizen,  male  or  female,  is  a  potential  producer  of 
food  and  munitions ;  and  probably  the  safest,  and 
certainly  the  best  supplied  shelters  in  the  universal 
cataclysm,  will  be  the  carefully  buried,  sand- 
bagged, and  camouflaged  general-headquarters  of 
the  contending  armies.  There  military  gentlemen 
of  limited  outlook  and  high  professional  training 
will,  in  comparative  security,  achieve  destruction 
beyond  their  understanding.  The  hard  logic  of 
war  which  gives  victory  always  to  the  most 
energetic  and  destructive  combatant,  will  turn 
warfare  more  and  more  from  mere  operations  for 
loot  or  conquest  or  predominance  into  operations 
for  the  conclusive  destruction  of  the  antagonists. 
A  relentless  thrust  towards  strenuousness  is  a 
characteristic  of  belligerent  conditions.  War  is 
war,  and  vehemence  is  in  its  nature.    You  must 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND         9 

hit  always  as  hard  as  you  can.  Offensive  and 
counter-offensive  methods  continue  to  prevail  over 
merely  defensive  ones.  The  victor  in  the  next 
great  war  will  be  bombed  from  the  air,  starved, 
and  depleted  almost  as  much  as  the  loser.  His 
victory  will  be  no  easy  one ;  it  will  be  a  triumph 
of  the  exhausted  and  dying  over  the  dead. 

It  has  been  argued  that  such  highly  organized 
and  long  prepared  warfare  as  the  world  saw  in 
1914-18  is  not  likely  to  recur  again  for  a  consider- 
able time  because  of  the  shock  inflicted  by  it  upon 
social  stability.  There  may  be  spasmodic  wars 
with  improvised  and  scanty  supplies,  these  super- 
ficially more  hopeful  critics  admit,  but  there  re- 
main no  communities  now  so  stable  and  so  sure  of 
their  people  as  to  prepare  and  wage  again  a  fully 
elaborated  scientific  war.  But  this  view  implies 
no  happier  outlook  for  mankind.  It  amounts  to 
this,  that  so  long  as  men  remain  disordered  and 
impoverished  they  will  not  rise  again  to  the  full 
height  of  scientific  war.  But  manifestly  this  will 
only  be  for  as  long  as  they  remain  disordered  and 
impoverished.  When  they  recover  they  will  re- 
cover to  repeat  again  their  former  disaster  with 
whatever  modern  improvements  and  intensifica- 
tions the  ingenuity  of  the  intervening  time  may 
have  devised.  This  new  phase  of  disorder,  conflict, 
and  social  unravelling  upon  which  we  have  en- 
tered, this  phase  of  decline  due  to  the  enhanced 
and  increasing  powers  for  waste  and  destruction 
in  mankind,  is  bound,  therefore,  to  continue  so 
long  as  the  divisions  based  upon  ancient  ideas  of 


10        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

conflict  remain;  and  if  for  a  time  the  decadence 
seems  to  be  arrested,  it  will  only  be  to  accumu- 
late under  the  influence  of  those  ideas  a  fresh  war 
storm  sufficiently  destructive  and  disorganizing  to 
restore  the  decadent  process. 

Unless  mankind  can  readjust  its  political  and 
social  ideas  to  this  essential  new  fact  of  its  enor- 
mously enlarged  powers,  unless  it  can  eliminate 
or  control  its  pugnacity,  no  other  prospect  seems 
open  to  us  but  decadence,  at  least  to  such  a  level 
of  barbarism  as  to  lose  and  forget  again  all  the 
scientific  and  industrial  achievements  of  our  pres- 
ent age.  Then,  with  its  powers  shrunken  to  their 
former  puny  scale,  our  race  may  recover  some  sort 
of  balance  between  the  injuries  and  advantages  of 
conflict.  Or,  since  our  decadent  species  may  have 
less  vitality  and  vigour  than  it  had  in  its  primitive 
phases,  it  may  dwindle  and  fade  out  altogether 
before  some  emboldened  animal  antagonist,  or 
through  some  world-wide  disease  brought  to  it 
perhaps  by  rats  and  dogs  and  insects  and  what 
not,  who  may  be  destined  to  be  heirs  to  the  rust- 
ing and  mouldering  ruins  of  the  cities  and  ports 
and  ways  and  bridges  of  to-day. 

Only  one  alternative  to  some  such  retrogression 
seems  possible,  and  that  is  the  conscious,  system- 
atic reconstruction  of  human  society  to  avert  it. 
The  world  has  been  brought  into  one  community, 
and  the  human  mind  and  will  may  be  able  to  recog- 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND        11 

nize  and  adapt  itself  to  this  fact — in  time.  Men, 
as  a  race,  may  succeed  in  turning  their  backs  upon 
the  method  of  warfare  and  the  methods  of  conflict 
and  in  embarking  upon  an  immense  world-wide 
effort  of  co-operation  and  mutual  toleration  and 
salvage.  They  may  have  the  vigour  to  abandon 
their  age-long  attempt  to  live  in  separate  sover- 
eign states,  and  to  grapple  with  and  master  the 
now  quite  destructive  force  that  traditional  hostil- 
ity has  become,  and  bring  their  affairs  together 
under  one  law  and  one  peace.  These  new  vast 
powers  over  nature  which  have  been  given  to 
them,  and  which  will  certainly  be  their  destruction 
if  their  purposes  remain  divergent  and  conflicting, 
will  then  be  the  means  by  which  they  may  set  up 
a  new  order  of  as  yet  scarcely  imaginable  interest 
and  happiness  and  achievement.  But  is  our  race 
capable  of  such  an  effort,  such  a  complete  reversal 
of  its  instinctive  and  traditional  impulses!  Can 
we  find  premonitions  of  any  such  bold  and  revo- 
lutionary adaptations  as  these,  in  the  mental  and 
political  life  of  to-day?  How  far  are  we,  reader 
and  writer,  for  example,  working  for  these  large 
new  securities?  Do  we  even  keep  them  stead- 
fastly in  our  minds?  How  is  it  with  the  people 
around  us?  Are  not  we  and  they  and  all  the  race 
still  just  as  much  adrift  in  the  current  of  cir- 
cumstances as  we  were  before  1914?  Without  a 
great  effort  on  our  part  (or  on  someone's  part) 
that  current  which  swirled  our  kind  into  a  sun- 
shine of  hope  and  opportunity  for  a  while  will 


12         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

carry  our  race  on  surely  and  inexorably  to  fresh 
wars,  to  shortages,  hunger,  miseries,  and  social 
debacles,  at  last  either  to  complete  extinction  or  to 
a  degradation  beyond  our  present  understand- 
ing. 


§2 

The  urgent  need  for  a  great  creative  effort  has 
become  apparent  in  the  affairs  of  mankind.  It  is 
manifest  that  unless  some  unity  of  purpose  can  be 
achieved  in  the  world,  unless  the  ever  more  violent 
and  disastrous  incidence  of  war  can  be  averted, 
unless  some  common  control  can  be  imposed  on 
the  headlong  waste  of  man's  limited  inheritance 
of  coal,  oil,  and  moral  energy  that  is  now  going 
on,  the  history  of  humanity  must  presently  cul- 
minate in  some  sort  of  disaster,  repeating  and 
exaggerating  the  disaster  of  the  great  war,  pro- 
ducing chaotic  social  conditions,  and  going  on 
thereafter  in  a  degenerative  process  towards  ex- 
tinction. So  much  all  reasonable  men  seem  now 
prepared  to  admit.  But  upon  the  question  of  how 
and  in  what  form  a  unity  of  purpose  and  a  com- 
mon control  of  human  affairs  is  to  be  established, 
there  is  still  a  great  and  lamentable  diversity  of 
opinion  and,  as  a  consequence,  an  enfeeblement 
and  wasteful  dispersal  of  will.  At  present  nothing 
has  been  produced  but  the  manifestly  quite  inade- 
quate League  of  Nations  at  Geneva,  and  a  num- 
ber of  generally  very  vague  movements  for  a 
world  law,  world  disarmament,  and  the  like, 
among  the  intellectuals  of  the  various  civilized 
countries  of  the  world. 

13 


14         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

The  common  failings  of  all  these  initiatives  are 
a  sort  of  genteel  timidity  and  a  defective  sense  of 
the  scale  of  the  enterprise  before  us.  A  neglect  of 
the  importance  of  scale  is  one  of  the  gravest 
faults  of  contemporary  education.  Because  a 
world-wide  political  organ  is  needed,  it  does  not 
follow  that  a  so-called  League  of  Nations  with- 
out representative  sanctions,  military  forces,  or 
authority  of  any  kind,  a  League  from  which  large 
sections  of  the  world  are  excluded  altogether,  is 
any  contribution  to  that  need.  People  have  a  way 
of  saying  it  is  better  than  nothing.  But  it  may 
be  worse  than  nothing.  It  may  create  a  feeling  of 
disillusionment  about  world-unifying  efforts.  If  a 
mad  elephant  were  loose  in  one's  garden,  it  would 
be  an  excellent  thing  to  give  one's  gardener  a  gun. 
But  it  would  have  to  be  an  adequate  gun,  an 
elephant  gun.  To  give  him  a  small  rook-rifle  and 
tell  him  it  was  better  than  nothing,  and  encourage 
him  to  face  the  elephant  with  that  in  his  hand, 
wauld  be  the  directest  way  of  getting  rid  not  of 
the  elephant  but  of  the  gardener. 

It  is,  if  people  will  but  think  steadfastly,  incon- 
ceivable that  there  should  be  any  world  control 
without  a  merger  of  sovereignty,  but  the  framers 
of  these  early  tentatives  towards  world  unity  have 
lacked  the  courage  of  frankness  in  this  respect. 
They  have  been  afraid  of  outbreaks  of  bawling 
patriotism,  and  they  have  tried  to  believe,  and  to 
make  others  believe,  that  they  contemplate  nothing 
more  than  a  league  of  nations,  when  in  reality  they 
contemplate  a  subordination  of  nations  and  admin- 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND        15 

istrations  to  one  common  law  and  rule.  The 
elementary  necessity  of  giving  the  council  of  any 
world-peace  organization,  which  is  to  be  more  than 
a  sentimental  international  gesture,  not  only  a 
complete  knowledge  but  an  effective  control  of  all 
the  military  resources  and  organizations  in  the 
world,  appalled  them.  They  did  not  even  ask  for 
such  a  control.  The  frowning  solidity  of  existing 
things  was  too  much  for  them.  They  wanted  to 
change  them,  but  when  it  came  to  laying  hands  on 
them — No!  They  decided  to  leave  them  alone. 
They  wanted  a  new  world — and  it  is  to  contain  just 
the  same  things  as  the  old. 

But  are  these  intellectuals  right  in  their  estimate 
of  the  common  man?  Is  he  such  a  shallow  and 
vehement  fool  as  they  seem  to  believe?  Is  he  so 
patriotic  as  they  make  out?  If  mankind  is  to  be 
saved  from  destruction  there  must  be  a  world  con- 
trol; a  world  control  means  a  world  government, 
it  is  only  another  name  for  it,  and  manifestly  that 
government  must  have  a  navy  that  will  supersede 
the  British  navy,  artillery  that  will  supersede  the 
French  artillery,  air  forces  superseding  all  exist- 
ing air  forces,  and  so  forth.  For  many  flags  there 
must  be  one  sovereign  flag;  orbis  terrarum.  Un- 
less a  world  control  amounts  to  that  it  will  be 
ridiculous,  just  as  a  judge  supported  by  two  or 
three  unarmed  policemen,  a  newspaper  reporter 
and  the  court  chaplain,  proposing  to  enforce  his 
decisions  in  a  court  packed  with  the  heavily  armed 
friends  of  the  plaintiff  and  defendant  would  be 
ridiculous.    But  the  common  man  is  supposed  to 


16         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

be  so  blindly  and  incurably  set  upon  his  British 
navy  or  his  French  army,  or  whatever  his  pet 
national  instrument  of  violence  may  be,  that  it  is 
held  to  be  impossible  to  supersede  these  beloved 
and  adored  forces.  If  that  is  so,  then  a  world  law 
is  impossible,  and  the  wisest  course  before  us  is 
to  snatch  such  small  happiness  as  we  may  hope  to 
do  and  leave  the  mad  elephant  to  work  its  will  in 
the  garden. 

But  is  it  sof  If  the  mass  of  common  men  are 
incurably  patriotic  and  belligerent  why  is  there  a 
note  of  querulous  exhortation  in  nearly  all 
patriotic  literature?  Why,  for  instance,  is  Mr. 
Eudyard  Kipling's  " History  of  England* '  so  full 
of  goading  and  scolding?  And  very  significant  in- 
deed to  any  student  of  the  human  outlook  was  the 
world  response  to  President  Wilson's  advocacy  of 
the  League  of  Nations  idea,  in  its  first  phase  in 
1918,  before  the  weakening  off  and  disillusionment 
of  the  Versailles  conference.  Just  for  a  little  while 
it  seemed  that  President  Wilson  stood  for  a  new 
order  of  things  in  the  world,  that  he  had  the 
wisdom  and  will  and  power  to  break  the  net  of 
hatreds  and  nationalisms  and  diplomacies  in  which 
the  Old  World  was  entangled.  And  while  he 
seemed  to  be  capable  of  that,  while  he  promised 
most  in  the  way  of  change  and  national  control, 
then  it  was  that  he  found  his  utmost  support  in 
every  country  in  the  world.  In  the  latter  half  of 
1918  there  was  scarcely  a  country  anywhere  in 
which  one  could  not  have  found  men  ready  to  die 
for  President  Wilson.    A  great  hopefulness  was 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       17 

manifest  in  the  world.  It  faded,  it  faded  very 
rapidly  again.  But  that  brief  wave  of  enthusiasm, 
which  set  minds  astir  with  the  same  great  idea  of 
one  peace  of  justice  throughout  the  earth  in  China 
and  Bokhara  and  the  Indian  bazaars,  in  Iceland 
and  Basutoland  and  Ireland  and  Morocco,  was  in- 
deed a  fact  perhaps  more  memorable  in  history 
even  than  the  great  war  itself.  It  displayed  a  pos- 
sibility of  the  simultaneous  operation  of  the  same 
general  ideas  throughout  the  world  quite  beyond 
any  previous  experience.  It  demonstrated  that 
the  generality  of  men  are  as  capable  of  being  cos- 
mopolitan and  pacifist  as  they  are  of  being 
patriotic  and  belligerent.  Both  moods  are  exten- 
sions and  exaltations  beyond  the  everyday  life, 
which  itself  is  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other. 
And  both  are  transitory  moods,  responses  to  ex- 
ternal suggestion. 

It  is  to  that  first  wave  of  popular  feeling  for  a 
world  law  transcending  and  moving  counter  to  all 
contemporary  diplomacies,  and  not  to  the  timid 
legalism  of  the  framers  of  the  first  schemes  for  a 
League  of  Nations  that  we  must  look,  if  we  are  to 
hope  at  all  for  the  establishment  of  a  new  order  in 
human  affairs.  It  is  upon  the  spirit  of  that  tran- 
sitory response  to  the  transitory  greatness  of 
President  Wilson  that  we  have  to  seize ;  we  have 
to  lay  hold  of  that,  to  recall  it  and  confirm  it  and 
enlarge  and  strengthen  it,  to  make  it  a  flux  of 
patriotisms  and  a  creator  of  new  loyalties  and 
devotions,  and  out  of  the  dead  dust  of  our  pres- 


18         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

ent  institutions  to  build  up  for  it  and  animate 
with  it  the  body  of  a  true  world  state. 

We  have  already  stated  the  clear  necessity,  if 
mankind  is  not  to  perish  by  the  hypertrophy  of 
warfare,  for  the  establishment  of  an  armed  and 
strong  world  law.  Here  in  this  spirit  that  has 
already  gleamed  upon  the  world  is  the  possible 
force  to  create  and  sustain  such  a  world  law 
What  is  it  that  intervenes  between  the  universal 
human  need  and  its  satisfaction!  Why,  since  there 
are  overwhelming  reasons  for  it  and  a  widespread 
disposition  for  it,  is  there  no  world-wide  creative 
effort  afoot  now  in  which  men  and  women  by  the 
million  are  participating — and  participating  with 
all  their  hearts?  Why  is  it  that,  except  for  the 
weak  gestures  of  the  Geneva  League  of  Nations 
and  a  little  writing  of  books  and  articles,  a  little 
pamphleteering,  some  scattered  committee  activi- 
ties on  the  part  of  people  chiefly  of  the  busybody 
class,  an  occasional  speech  and  a  diminishing 
volume  of  talk  and  allusion,  no  attempts  are 
apparent  to  stay  the  plain  drift  of  human  society 
towards  new  conflicts  and  the  sluices  of  final  dis- 
aster? 

The  answer  to  that  Why,  probes  deep  into  the 
question  of  human  motives. 

It  must  be  because  we  are  all  creatures  of  our 
immediate  surroundings,  because  our  minds  and 
energies  are  chiefly  occupied  by  the  affairs  of 
every  day,  because  we  are  all  chiefly  living  our 
own  lives,  and  very  few  of  us,  except  by  a  kind 
of  unconscious  contribution,  the  life  of  mankind. 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND        19 

In  moments  of  mental  activity,  in  the  study  or 
in  contemplation,  we  may  rise  to  a  sense  of  the 
dangers  and  needs  of  human  destiny,  but  it  is  only 
a  few  minds  and  characters  of  prophetic  quality 
that,  without  elaborate  artificial  assistance,  seem 
able  to  keep  hold  upon  and  guide  their  lives  by 
such  relatively  gigantic  considerations.  The  gen- 
erality of  men  and  women,  so  far  as  their  natural 
disposition  goes,  are  scarcely  more  capable  of 
apprehending  and  consciously  serving  the  human 
future  than  a  van  full  of  well-fed  rabbits  would 
be  of  grasping  the  fact  that  their  van  was  running 
smoothly  and  steadily  down  an  inclined  plane  into 
the  sea.  It  is  only  as  the  result  of  considerable 
educational  effort  and  against  considerable  resist- 
ance that  our  minds  are  brought  to  a  broader  view. 
In  every  age  for  many  thousands  of  years  men  of 
exceptionl  vision  have  spent  their  lives  in  pas- 
sionate efforts  to  bring  us  ordinary  men  into  some 
relation  of  response  and  service  to  the  greater 
issues  of  life.  It  is  these  pioneers  of  vision  who 
have  given  the  world  its  religions  and  its  philo- 
sophical cults,  its  loyalties  and  observances ;  and 
who  have  imposed  ideas  of  greatness  and  duty  on 
their  fellows.  In  every  age  jthe  ordinary  man  has 
submitted  reluctantly  to  such  teachings,  has  made 
his  peculiar  compromises  with  them,  has  reduced 
them  as  far  as  possible  to  formula  and  formality, 
and  got  back  as  rapidly  as  possible  to  the  eating 
and  drinking  and  desire,  the  personal  spites  and 
rivalries  and  glories  which  constitute  his  reality. 
The  mass  of  men  to-day  do  not  seem  to  care,  nor 


20         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

want  to  care,  whither  the  political  and  social  insti- 
tutions to  which  they  are  accustomed  are  taking 
them.  Such  considerations  overstrain  us.  And  it 
is  only  by  the  extremest  effort  of  those  who  are 
capable  of  a  sense  of  racial  danger  and  duty  that 
the  collective  energies  of  men  can  ever  be  gathered 
together  and  organized  and  orientated  towards 
the  common  good.  To  nearly  all  men  and  women, 
unless  they  are  in  the  vein  for  it,  such  discussion 
as  this  in  these  essays  does  not  appeal  as  being 
right  or  wrong;  it  does  not  really  interest  them, 
rather  it  worries  them ;  and  for  the  most  part  they 
would  be  glad  to  disregard  it  as  completely  as  a 
lecture  on  wheels  and  gravitation  and  the  physio- 
logical consequences  of  prolonged  submergence 
would  be  disregarded  by  those  rabbits  in  the  van. 
But  man  is  a  creature  very  different  in  his 
nature  from  a  rabbit,  and  if  he  is  less  instinctively 
social,  he  is  much  more  consciously  social.  Chief 
among  his  differences  must  be  the  presence  of 
those  tendencies  which  we  call  conscience,  that 
haunting  craving  to  be  really  right  and  to  do  the 
really  right  thing  which  is  the  basis  of  the  moral 
and  perhaps  also  of  most  of  the  religious  life.  In 
this  lies  our  hope  for  mankind.  Man  hates  to  be 
put  right,  and  yet  also  he  wants  to  be  right.  He 
is  a  creature  divided  against  himself,  seeking  both 
to  preserve  and  to  overcome  his  egotism.  It  is 
upon  the  presence  of  the  latter  strand  in  man's 
complex  make-up  that  we  must  rest  our  hopes  of 
a  developing  will  for  the  world  state  which  will 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       21 

gradually  gather  together  and  direct  into  a 
massive  constructive  effort  the  now  quite  dis- 
persed chaotic  and  traditional  activities  of 
men. 

As  we  have  examined  this  problem  it  has  be- 
come clear  that  the  task  of  bringing  about  that 
consolidated  world  state  which  is  necessary  to  pre- 
vent the  decline  and  decay  of  mankind  is  not 
primarily  one  for  the  diplomatists  and  lawyers 
and  politicians  at  all.  It  is  an  educational  one. 
It  is  a  moral  based  on  an  intellectual  reconstruc- 
tion. The  task  immediately  before  mankind  is  to 
find  release  from  the  contentious  loyalties  and 
hostilities  of  the  past  which  make  collective  world- 
wide action  impossible  at  the  present  time,  in  a 
world-wide  common  vision  of  the  history  and  des- 
tinies of  the  race.  On  that  as  a  basis,  and  on  that 
alone,  can  a  world  control  be  organized  and  main- 
tained. The  effort  ^demanded  from  mankind, 
therefore,  is  primarily  and  essentially  a  bold  re- 
construction of  the  outlook  upon  life  of  hundreds 
of  millions  of  minds.  The  idea  of  a  world  com- 
monweal has  to  be  established  as  the  criterion  of 
political  institutions,  and  also  as  the  criterion  of 
general  conduct  in  hundreds  of  millions  of  brains. 
It  has  to  dominate  education  everywhere  in  the 
world.  When  that  end  is  achieved,  then  the  world 
state  will  be  achieved,  and  it  can  be  achieved  in 
no  other  way.  And  unless  that  world  state  can 
be  achieved,  it  would  seem  that  the  outlook  before 
mankind  is  a  continuance  of  disorder  and  of  more 


22         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

and  more  destructive  and  wasteful  conflicts,  a 
steady  process  of  violence,  decadence,  and  misery 
towards  extinction,  or  towards  modifications  of 
our  type  altogether  beyond  our  present  under- 
standing and  sympathy. 


§3 

In  framing  an  estimate  of  the  human  future 
two  leading  facts  are  dominant.  The  first  is  the 
plain  necessity  for  a  political  reorganization  of  the 
world  as  a  unity,  to  save  our  race  from  the  social 
disintegration  and  complete  physical  destruction 
which  war,  under  modern  conditions,  must  ulti- 
mately entail,  and  the  second  is  the  manifest 
absence  of  any  sufficient  will  in  the  general  mass 
of  mankind  at  the  present  time  to  make  such  a 
reorganization  possible.  There  appear  to  be  the 
factors  of  such  a  will  in  men,  but  they  are  for  the 
most  part  unawakened,  or  they  are  unorganized 
and  ineffective.  And  there  is  a  very  curious  in- 
capacity to  grasp  the  reality  of  the  human  situa- 
tion, a  real  resistance  to  seeing  things  as  they  are 
— for  man  is  an  effort-shirking  animal — which 
greatly  impedes  the  development  of  such  a  will. 
Failing  the  operation  of  such  a  sufficient  will, 
human  affairs  are  being  directed  by  use  and  wont, 
by  tradition  and  accidental  deflections.  Mankind, 
after  the  tragic  concussion  of  the  great  war,  seems 
now  to  be  drifting  again  towards  new  and  proba- 
bly more  disastrous  concussions. 

The  catastrophe  of  the  great  war  did  more  or 
less  completely  awaken  a  certain  limited  number 
of  intelligent  pienple  tfo  the  need  of  some  general 

23 


24         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

control  replacing  this  ancient  traditional  driftage 
of  events.  But  they  shrank  from  the  great  impli- 
cations of  such  a  world  control.  The  only  prac- 
ticable way  to  achieve  a  general  control  in  the  face 
of  existing  governments,  institutions  and  preju- 
dices, interested  obstruction  and  the  common  dis- 
regard, is  by  extending  this  awakening  to  great 
masses  of  people.  This  means  an  unprecedented 
educational  effort,  an  appeal  to  men's  intelligence 
and  men's  imagination  such  as  the  world  has  never 
seen  before.  Is  it  possible  to  rationalize  the  at 
present  chaotic  will  of  mankind?  That  possibility, 
if  it  is  a  possibility,  is  the  most  important  thing  in 
contemporary  human  affairs. 

We  are  asking  here  for  an  immense  thing,  for 
a  change  of  ideas,  a  vast  enlargement  of  ideas,  and 
for  something  very  like  a  change  of  heart  in 
hundreds  of  millions  of  human  beings.  But  then 
we  are  dealing  with  the  fate  of  the  entire  species. 
We  are  discussing  the  prevention  of  wars,  dis- 
orders, shortages,  famines  and  miseries  for  cen- 
turies ahead.  The  initial  capital  we  have  to  go 
upon  is  as  yet  no  more  than  the  aroused  under- 
standing and  conscience  of  a  few  thousands,  at 
most  of  a  few  score  thousands  of  people.  Can  so 
little  a  leaven  leaven  so  great  a  lump?  Is  a  re- 
sponse to  this  appeal  latent  in  the  masses  of  man- 
kind? Is  there  anything  in  history  to  justify  hope 
for  so  gigantic  a  mental  turnover  in  our  race? 

A  consideration  of  the  spread  of  Christianity 
in  the  first  four  centuries  A.D.  or  of  the  spread 
of  Islam  in  the  seventh  century  will,  we  believe, 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       25 

support  a  reasonable  hope  that  such  a  change  in 
the  minds  of  men,  whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  a 
practicable  change,  that  it  can  be  done  and  that 
it  may  even  probably  be  done.  Consider  our  two 
instances.  The  propagandas  of  those  two  great 
religions  changed  and  changed  for  ever  the  politi- 
cal and  social  outlook  over  vast  areas  of  the 
world's  surface.  Yet  while  the  stir  for  world 
unity  begins  now  simultaneously  in  many  coun- 
tries and  many  groups  of  people,  those  two  propa- 
gandas each  radiated  from  one  single  centre  and 
were  in  the  first  instance  the  teachings  of  single 
individuals;  and  while  to-day  we  can  deal  with 
great  reading  populations  and  can  reach  them  by 
press  and  printed  matter,  by  a  universal  distribu- 
tion of  books,  by  great  lecturing  organizations 
and  the  like,  those  earlier  great  changes  in  human 
thought  were  achieved  mainly  by  word  of  mouth 
and  by  crabbed  manuscripts,  painfully  copied  and 
passed  slowly  from  hand  to  hand.  So  far  it  is 
only  the  trader  who  has  made  any  effectual  use 
of  the  vast  facilities  the  modern  world  has  pro- 
duced for  conveying  a  statement  simultaneously 
to  great  numbers  of  people  at  a  distance.  The 
world  of  thought  still  hesitates  to  use  the  means 
of  power  that  now  exist  for  it.  History  and  politi- 
cal philosophy  in  the  modern  world  are  like  bash- 
ful dons  at  a  dinner  party;  they  crumble  their 
bread  and  talk  in  undertones  and  clever  allusions 
to  their  nearest  neighbour,  abashed  at  the  thought 
of  addressing  the  whole  table.  But  in  a  world 
where  Mars  can  reach  out  in  a  single  night  and 


26         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

smite  a  city  a  thousand  miles  away,  we  cannot  suf- 
fer wisdom  to  hesitate  in  an  inaudible  gentility. 
The  knowledge  and  vision  that  is  good  enough  for 
the  best  of  us  is  good  enough  for  all.  This  gospel 
of  human  brotherhood  and  a  common  law  and  rule 
for  all  mankind,  the  attempt  to  meet  this  urgent 
necessity  of  a  common  control  of  human  affairs, 
which  indeed  is  no  new  religion  but  only  an  at- 
tempt to  realize  practically  the  common  teaching 
of  all  the  established  religions  of  the  world,  has 
to  speak  with  dominating  voice  everywhere  Be- 
tween the  poles  and  round  about  the  world. 

And  it  must  become  part  of  the  universal  edu- 
cation. It  must  speak  through  the  school  and 
university.  It  is  too  often  forgotten,  in  America, 
perhaps,  even  more  than  in  Europe,  that  education 
exists  for  the  community,  and  for  the  individual 
only  so  far  as  it  makes  him  a  sufficient  member  of 
the  community.  The  chief  end  of  education  is  to 
subjugate  and  sublimate  for  the  collective  pur- 
poses of  our  kind  the  savage  egotism  we  inherit. 
Every  school,  every  college,  teaches  directly  and 
still  more  by  implication,  relationship  to  a  com- 
munity and  devotion  to  a  community.  In  too 
many  cases  that  community  we  let  our  schools  and 
colleges  teach  to  our  children  is  an  extremely  nar- 
row one ;  it  is  the  community  of  a  sect,  of  a  class, 
or  of  an  intolerant,  greedy  and  unrighteous  na- 
tionalism. Schools  have  increased  greatly  in  num- 
bers throughout  the  world  during  the  last  century, 
but  there  has  been  little  or  no  growth  in  the  con- 
ception of  education  in  schools.     Education  has 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       27 

been  extended,  but  it  has  not  been  developed.  If 
man  is  to  be  saved  from  self-destruction  by  the 
organization  of  a  world  community,  there  must  be 
a  broadening  of  the  reference  of  the  teaching  in 
the  schools  of  all  the  world  to  that  community  of 
the  world.  World-wide  educational  development 
and  reform  are  the  necessary  preparations  for 
and  the  necessary  accompaniments  of  a  political 
reconstruction  of  the  world.  The  two  are  the 
right  and  left  hands  of  the  same  thing.  Neither 
can  effect  much  without  the  other. 

Now  it  is  manifest  that  this  reorganization  of 
the  world's  affairs  and  of  the  world's  education 
which  we  hold  to  be  imperatively  dictated  by  the 
change  in  warfare,  communications  and  other 
conditions  of  human  life  brought  about  by  scien- 
tific discovery  during  Jhe  last  hundred  years,  car- 
ries with  it  a  practical  repudiation  of  the  claims 
of  every  existing  sovereign  government  in  the 
world  to  be  final  and  sovereign,  to  be  anything 
more  than  provisional  and  replaceable.  There  is 
the  difficulty  that  has  checked  hundreds  of  men 
after  their  first  step  towards  this  work  for  a  uni- 
versal peace.  It  involves,  it  cannot  but  involve,  a 
revision  of  their  habitual  allegiances.  At  best 
existing  governments  are  to  be  regarded  as  local 
trustees  and  caretakers  for  the  coming  human 
commonweal.  If  they  are  not  that,  then  they  are 
necessarily  obstructive  and  antagonistic.  But  few 
rulers,  few  governments,  few  officials,  will  have 
the  greatness  of  mind  to  recognize  and  admit 
this  plain  reality.     By  a  kind  of  necessity  they 


28         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

force  upon  their  subjects  and  publics  a  conflict  of 
loyalties.  The  feeble  driftage  of  human  affairs 
from  one  base  or  greedy  arrangement  or  cowardly 
evasion  to  another,  since  the  Armistice  of  1918, 
is  very  largely  due  to  the  obstinate  determination 
of  those  who  are  in  positions  of  authority  and 
responsibility  to  ignore  the  plain  teachings  of  the 
great  war  and  its  sequelae.  They  are  resisting 
adjustments ;  their  minds  are  fighting  against  the 
sacrifices  of  pride  and  authority  that  a  full  recog- 
nition of  their  subordination  to  the  world  com- 
monweal will  involve.  They  are  prepared,  it 
would  seem,  to  fight  against  the  work  of  human 
salvation  basely  and  persistently,  whenever  their 
accustomed  importance  is  threatened. 

Even  in  the  schools  and  in  the  world  of  thought 
the  established  thing  will  make  its  unrighteous 
fight  for  life.  The  dull  and  the  dishonest  in  high 
places  will  suppress  these  greater  ideas  when  they 
can,  and  ignore  when  they  dare  not  suppress.  It 
seems  too  much  to  hope  for  that  there  should  be 
any  willingness  on  the  part  of  any  established  au- 
thority to  admit  its  obsolescence  and  prepare  the 
way  for  its  merger  in  a  world  authority.  It  is  not 
creative  minds  that  produce  revolutions,  but  the 
obstinate  conservatism  of  established  authority. 
It  is  the  blank  refusal  to  accept  the  idea  of  an 
orderly  evolution  towards  new  things  that  gives  a 
revolutionary  quality  to  every  constructive  pro- 
posal. The  huge  task  of  political  and  educational 
reconstruction  which  is  needed  to  arrest  the  pres- 
ent drift  of  human  affairs  towards  catastrophe, 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND        29 

must  be  achieved,  if  it  is  to  be  achieved  at  all, 
mainly  by  voluntary  and  unofficial  effort ;  and  for 
the  most  part  in  the  teeth  of  official  opposition. 

There  are  one  or  two  existing  states  to  which 
men  have  looked  for  some  open  recognition  of 
their  duty  to  mankind  as  a  whole,  and  of  the 
necessarily  provisional  nature  of  their  contempo- 
rary constitutions.  The  United  States  of  America 
constitute  a  political  system,  profoundly  different 
in  its  origin  and  in  its  spirit,  from  any  old-world 
state;  it  ^as  felt  that  here  at  least  might  be  an 
evolutionary  state;  and  in  the  palmy  days  of 
President  Wilson  it  did  seem  for  a  brief  interval 
as  if  the  New  World  was  indeed  coming  to  the 
rescue  of  the  old,  as  if  America  was  to  play  the 
role  of  a  propagandist  continent,  bringing  its 
ideas  of  equality  and  freedom,  and  extending  the 
spirit  of  its  union  to  all  the  nations  of  the  earth. 
From  that  expectation,  the  world  opinion  is  now 
in  a  state  of  excessive  and  unreasonable  recoil. 
President  Wilson  fell  away  from  his  first  intima- 
tions of  that  world-wide  federal  embrace,  his  mind 
and  will  were  submerged  by  the  clamour  of  con- 
tending patriotisms  and  the  subtle  expedients  of 
old-world  diplomacy  in  Paris ;  but  American  acces- 
sibility to  the  idea  of  a  federalized  world  neither 
began  with  him  nor  will  it  end  with  his  failure. 
America  is  still  a  hopeful  laboratory  of  world- 
unifying  thought.  A  long  string  of  arbitration 
treaties  stands  to  the  credit  of  America,  and  a 
series  of  developing  Pan-American  projects,  point- 
ing clearly  to  at  least  a  continental  synthesis 


30         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

within  a  measurable  time.  There  has  been,  and 
there  still  is,  a  better  understanding  of,  and  a 
greater  receptivity  to,  ideas  of  international  syn- 
thesis in  America  than  in  any  European  state. 

And  the  British  Empire,  which,  according  to 
many  of  its  liberal  apologists  is  already  a  league 
of  nations,  linked  together  in  a  mutually  advan- 
tageous peace,  to  that  too  men  have  looked  for 
some  movement  of  adaptation  to  this  greater  syn- 
thesis which  is  the  world's  pre-eminent  need.  But 
so  far  the  British  Empire  has  failed  to  respond  to 
such  expectations.  The  war  has  left  it  strained 
and  bruised  and  with  its  affairs  very  much  in  the 
grip  of  the  military  class,  the  most  illiterate  and 
dangerous  class  in  the  community.  They  have 
done,  perhaps,  irreparable  mischief  to  the  peace 
of  the  empire  in  Ireland,  India  and  Egypt,  and 
they  have  made  the  claim  of  the  British  system 
to  be  an  exemplary  unification  of  dissimilar  peo- 
ples seem  now  to  many  people  incurably  absurd. 
It  is  a  great  misfortune  for  mankind  that  the  Brit- 
ish Empire,  which  played  so  sturdy  and  central  a 
part  in  the  great  war,  could  at  its  close  achieve  no 
splendid  and  helpful  gesture  towards  a  generous 
reconstruction. 

Since  the  armistice  there  has  been  an  extraor- 
dinary opportunity  for  the  British  monarchy  to 
have  displayed  a  sense  of  the  new  occasions  before 
the  world,  and  to  have  led  the  way  towards  the 
efforts  and  renunciations  of  an  international 
renascence.  It  could  have  taken  up  a  lead  that 
the  President  of  the  United  States  had  initiated 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       31 

and  relinquished;  it  could  have  used  its  peculiar 
position  to  make  an  unexampled  appeal  to  the 
whole  world.  It  could  have  created  a  new  epoch  in 
history.  The  Prince  of  Wales  has  been  touring 
the  world-wide  dominions  of  which,  some  day,  he 
is  to  be  the  crowned  head.  He  has  received  ad- 
dresses, visited  sights,  been  entertained,  shaken 
hands  with  scores  of  thousands  of  people  and  sub- 
mitted himself  to  the  eager,  yet  unpenetrating 
gaze  of  vast  multitudes.  His  smallest  acts  have 
been  observed  with  premeditated  admiration,  his 
lightest  words  recorded.  He  is  not  now  a  boy ;  he 
saw  something  of  the  great  war,  even  if  his  exalted 
position  denied  him  any  large  share  of  its  severer 
hardships  and  dangers ;  he  cannot  be  blind  to  the 
general  posture  of  the  world's  affairs.  Here, 
surely,  was  a  chance  of  saying  something  that 
would  be  heard  from  end  to  end  of  the  earth, 
something  kingly  and  great-minded.  Here  was 
the  occasion  for  a  fine  restatement  of  the  obliga- 
tions and  duties  of  empire.  But  from  first  to  last 
the  prince  has  said  nothing  to  quicken  the  imagi- 
nations of  the  multitude  of  his  future  subjects  to 
the  gigantic  possibilities  of  these  times,  nothing 
to  reassure  the  foreign  observer  that  the  British 
Empire  embodies  anything  more  than  the  colossal 
national  egotism  and  impenetrable  self-satisfac- 
tion of  the  British  peoples.  "Here  we  are,"  said 
the  old  order  in  those  demonstrations,  i '  and  here 
we  mean  to  stick.  Just  as  we  have  been,  so  we 
remain.  British! — we  are  Bourbons.' '  These 
smiling  tours  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  in  these 


32        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

years  of  shortage,  stress,  and  insecurity,  consti- 
tute a  propaganda  of  inanity  unparalleled  in  the 
worlds  history. 

Nor  do  we  find  in  the  nominal  rulers  and  official 
representatives  of  other  countries  any  clear  ad- 
mission of  the  necessity  for  a  great  and  funda- 
mental change  in  the  scope  and  spirit  of  govern- 
ment. These  official  and  ruling  people,  more  than 
any  other  people,  are  under  the  sway  of  that  life 
of  use  and  wont  which  dominates  us  all.  They  are 
often  trained  to  their  positions,  or  they  have  won 
their  way  to  their  positions  of  authority  through 
a  career  of  political  activities  which  amounts  to  a 
training.  And  that  training  is  not  a  training  in 
enterprise  and  change ;  it  is  a  training  in  sticking 
tight  and  getting  back  to  precedent.  We  can  ex- 
pect nothing  from  them.  We  shall  be  lucky  if 
the  resistance  of  the  administrative  side  of  exist- 
ing states  to  the  conception  of  a  world  common- 
weal is  merely  passive.  There  is  little  or  no  pros- 
pect of  any  existing  governing  system,  unless  it 
be  such  a  federal  system  as  Switzerland  or  the 
United  States,  passing  directly  and  without  exten- 
sive internal  changes  into  combination  with  other 
sovereign  powers  as  part  of  a  sovereign  world 
system.  At  some  point  the  independent  states 
will  as  systems  resist,  and  unless  an  overwhelming 
world  conscience  for  the  world  state  has  been 
brought  into  being  and  surrounds  them  with  an 
understanding  watchfulness,  and  invades  the  con- 
sciences of  their  supporters  and  so  weakens  their 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       33 

resisting  power,  they  will  resist  violently  and  dis- 
astrously. But  it  will  be  an  incoherent  resistance 
because  the  very  nature  of  the  sovereign  states  of 
to-day  is  incoherence.  There  can  be  no  world- 
wide combination  of  sovereign  states  to  resist  the 
world  state,  because  that  would  be  to  create  the 
world  state  in  the  attempt  to  defeat  it. 


M 

In  the  three  preceding  essays  an  attempt  has 
been  made  to  state  the  pass  at  which  mankind  has 
arrived,  the  dangers  and  mischiefs  that  threaten 
our  race,  and  the  need  there  is  and  the  oppor- 
tunities there  are  for  a  strenuous  attempt  to  end 
the  age-long  bickerings  of  nations  and  empires 
and  establish  one  community  of  law  and  effort 
throughout  the  whole  world.  Stress  has  been  laid 
chiefly  upon  the  monstrous  evils  and  disasters  a 
continuation  of  our  present  divisions,  our  nation- 
alisms and  imperialisms  and  the  like,  will  certainly 
entail.  These  considerations  of  evil,  however,  are 
only  the  negative  argument  for  this  creative  ef- 
fort ;  they  have  been  thrust  forward  because  war, 
disorder,  insufficiency,  and  the  ill  health,  the  part- 
ings, deprivations,  boredom  and  unhappiness  that 
arise  out  of  these  things  are  well  within  our  expe- 
rience and  entirely  credible ;  the  positive  argument 
for  a  world  order  demands  at  once  more  faith  and 
imagination. 

Griven  a  world  law  and  world  security,  a  release 
from  the  net  of  bickering  frontiers,  world-wide 
freedom  of  movement,  and  world-wide  fellowship, 
a  thousand  good  things  that  are  now  beyond  hope 
or  dreaming  would  come  into  the  ordinary  life. 
The  whole  world  would  be  our  habitation,  and  the 

34 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       35 

energies  of  men,  released  from  their  preoccupa- 
tion with  contention,  would  go  more  and  more 
abundantly  into  the  accumulation  and  application 
of  scientific  knowledge,  that  is  to  say  into  the  in- 
crease of  mental  and  bodily  health,  of  human 
power,  of  interest  and  happiness.  Even  to-day 
the  most  delightful  possibilities  stand  waiting, 
inaccessible  to  nearly  all  of  us  because  of  the 
general  insecurity,  distrust  and  anger.  Flying,  in 
a  world  safely  united  in  peace,  could  take  us  now 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  smoothly,  securely  through 
the  sweet  upper  air,  in  frve  or  six  days.  In  two 
or  three  years  there  could  again  be  abundance  of 
food  and  pleasant  clothing  for  everyone  through- 
out the  whole  world.  Men  could  be  destroying 
their  slums  and  pestilential  habitations  and  re- 
building spacious  and  beautiful  cities.  Given  only 
peace  and  confidence  and  union  we  could  double 
our  yearly  production  of  all  that  makes  life  de- 
sirable and  still  double  our  leisure  for  thought 
and  growth.  We  could  live  in  a.  universal  palace 
and  make  the  whole  globe  our  garden  and  play- 
ground. 

But  these  are  not  considerations  that  sway  peo- 
ple to  effort.  Fear  and  hate,  not  hope  and  desire, 
have  been  hitherto  the  effective  spurs  for  men. 
The  most  popular  religions  are  those  which  hold 
out  the  widest  hopes  of  damnation.  Our  lives 
are  lives  of  use  and  wont,  we  distrust  the  promise 
of  delightful  experience  and  achievements  beyond 
our  accustomed  ways ;  it  offends  our  self-satisfac- 
tion even  to  regard  them  as  possibilities;  we  do 


36         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

not  like  the  implied  cheapening  of  familiar  things. 
We  are  all  ready  to  sneer  at  "  Utopias, ' ■  as  elderly- 
invalids  sneer  at  the  buoyant  hopes  of  youth  and 
do  their  best  to  think  them  sure  of  frustration. 
The  aged  and  disillusioned  profess  a  keen  appreci- 
ation of  the  bath  chair  and  the  homely  spoonful  of 
medicine,  and  pity  a  crudity  that  misses  the  fine 
quality  of  those  ripe  established  things.  Most 
people  are  quite  ready  to  dismiss  the  promise  of 
a  full  free  life  for  all  mankind  with  a  sneer.  That 
would  rob  the  world  of  romance,  they  say,  the 
romance  of  passport  offices,  custom  houses,  short- 
ages of  food,  endless  petty  deprivations,  slums, 
pestilence,  under-educated  stunted  children, 
youths  dying  in  heaps  in  muddy  trenches,  an 
almost  universal  lack  of  vitality,  and  all  the  pic- 
turesque eventfulness  of  contemporary  conditions. 
So  that  we  have  not  dwelt  here  upon  the  life- 
giving  aspect  of  a  possible  world-state,  but  only  on 
its  life-saving  aspects.  We  have  not  argued  that 
our  present  life  of  use  and  wont  could  be  replaced 
by  an  infinitely  better  way  of  living.  We  have 
rather  pointed  out  that  if  things  continue  to  drift 
as  they  are  doing,  the  present  life  of  use  and  wont 
will  become  intolerably  insecure.  It  is  the  thought 
of  the  large  bombing  aeroplane  and  not  the  hope 
of  swift  travelling  across  the  sky  that  will  move 
the  generality  of  men,  if  they  are  to  be  moved  at 
all,  towards  a  world  peace. 

But  whether  the  lever  that  moves  them  is  desire 
or  fear  the  majority  of  men,  unless  the  species  is 
to  perish,  must  be  brought  within  a  measurable 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       37 

time  to  an  understanding  of,  and  a  will  for,  a 
single  world  government.  And  since  at  first  exist- 
ing institutions,  established  traditions,  educa- 
tional organizations  and  the  like,  will  all  be  pas- 
sively if  not  actively  resistant  to  the  spread  of  this 
saving  idea,  and  much  more  so  to  any  attempts  to 
realize  this  saving  idea,  there  remains  nothing 
for  us  to  look  to,  at  the  present  time,  for  the  first 
organization  of  this  immense  effort  of  mental  re- 
versal, but  the  zeal  and  devotion  and  self-sacrifice 
of  convinced  individuals.  The  world  state  must 
begin;  it  can  only  begin,  as  a  propagandist  cult,  or 
as  a  group  of  propagandist  cults,  to  which  men 
and  women  must  give  themselves  and  their  ener- 
gies, regardless  of  the  consequences  to  themselves. 
Laying  the  foundations  of  a  world  state  upon  a 
site  already  occupied  by  a  muddle  of  buildings  is 
an  undertaking  which  will  almost  necessarily 
bring  its  votaries  into  conflict  with  established 
authority  and  current  sentiment;  they  will  have 
to  face  the  possibility  of  lives  of  conflict,  misun- 
derstanding, much  thankless  exertion;  they  must 
count  on  little  honour  and  considerable  active  dis- 
like; and  they  will  have  to  find  what  consolation 
they  can  in  the  interest  of  the  conflict  itself  and 
in  the  thought  of  a  world,  made  at  last  by  such 
efforts  as  theirs,  peaceful  and  secure  and  vigor- 
ous, a  world  they  can  never  hope  to  see.  So  stated 
it  seems  a  bad  bargain  that  the  worker  for  the 
world-state  is  invited  to  make,  yet  the  world  has 
never  lacked  people  prepared  to  make  such  a  bar- 
gain and  they  will  not  fail  it  now.     There  are 


38         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

worse  things  than  conflict  without  manifest  vic- 
tory and  effort  without  apparent  reward.  To  the 
finer  kind  of  mind  it  is  infinitely  more  tragic  and 
distressing  to  find  that  existence  bears  a  foolish 
aimless  face.  Many  people,  tormented  by  the  dis- 
content of  conscience,  and  wanting,  more  than  they 
can  ever  want  any  satisfaction,  some  satisfying 
rule  of  life,  some  criterion  of  conduct,  will  find  in 
this  cult  of  the  world-state  just  that  sustaining 
reality  they  need.  And  their  number  will  grow. 
Because  it  is  a  practical  and  reasonable  shape  for 
a  life,  arising  naturally  out  of  a  proper  under- 
standing of  history  and  physical  science,  and  em- 
bodying in  a  unifying  plan  the  teaching  of  all  the 
great  religions  of  the  world.  It  comes  to  us  not 
to  destroy  but  to  fulfil. 

The  activities  of  a  cult  which  set  itself  to  bring 
about  the  world-state  would  at  first  be  propa- 
gandist, they  would  be  intellectual  and  educa- 
tional, and  only  as  a  sufficient  mass  of  opinion  and 
will  had  accumulated  would  they  become  to  a  pre- 
dominant extent  politically  constructive.  Such  a 
cult  must  direct  itself  particularly  to  the  teaching 
of  the  young.  So  far  the  propaganda  for  a  world 
law,  the  League  of  Nations  propaganda,  since  it 
has  sought  immediate  political  results,  has  been 
addressed  almost  entirely  to  adults ;  and  as  a  con- 
sequence it  has  had  to  adapt  itself  as  far  as  pos- 
sible to  their  preconceptions  about  the  history  and 
outlook  of  their  own  nationality,  and  to  the  gen- 
eral absence  as  yet  in  the  world  of  any  vision  of 
the  welfare  of  mankind  as  one  whole.    It  is  be- 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       39 

cause  of  this  acceptance  of  current  adult  ideas 
about  patriotism  and  nationality  that  the  move- 
ment has  adopted  the  unsatisfactory  phrase,  a 
League  of  Nations,  when  what  is  contemplated  is 
much  more  than  a  league  and  a  very  considerable 
subordination  of  national  sovereignty.  And  a 
large  share  in  the  current  ineffectiveness  of  the 
League  of  Nations  is  evidently  due  to  the  fact  that 
men  interpret  the  phrase  and  the  proposition  of 
the  League  of  Nations  differently  in  accordance 
with  the  different  fundamental  historical  ideas 
they  possess,  ideas  that  propaganda  has  hitherto 
left  unassailed.  The  worker  for  the  world-state 
will  look  further  and  plough  deeper.  It  is  these 
fundamental  ideas  which  are  the  vitally  important 
objective  of  a  world-unifying  movement,  and  they 
can  only  be  brought  into  that  world-wide  uni- 
formity which  is  essential  to  the  enduring  peace 
of  mankind,  by  teaching  children  throughout  all 
the  earth  the  common  history  of  their  kind,  and 
so  directing  their  attention  to  the  common  future 
of  their  descendants.  The  driving  force  that 
makes  either  war  or  peace  is  engendered  where 
the  young^  are  taught.  The  teacher,  whether 
mother,  priest,  or  schoolmaster,  is  the  real  maker 
of  history;  rulers,  statesmen  and  soldiers  do  but 
work  out  the  possibilities  of  co-operation  or  con- 
flict the  teacher  creates.  This  is  no  rhetorical 
flourish;  it  is  a  sober  fact.  The  politicians  and 
masses  of  our  time  dance  on  the  wires  of  their 
early  education. 
Teaching  then  is  the  initial  and  decisive  factor 


40         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

in  the  future  of  mankind,  and  the  first  duty  of 
everyone  who  has  the  ability  and  opportunity,  is 
to  teach,  or  to  subserve  the  teaching  of,  the  true 
history  of  mankind  and  of  the  possibilities  of  this 
vision  of  a  single  world-state  that  history  opens 
out  to  us.  Men  and  women  can  help  the  spread 
of  the  saving  doctrine  in  a  thousand  various  ways ; 
for  it  is  not  only  in  homes  and  schools  that  minds 
are  shaped.  They  can  print  and  publish  books, 
endow  schools  and  teaching,  organize  the  distri- 
bution of  literature,  insist  upon  the  proper  in- 
struction of  children  in  world-wide  charity  and 
fellowship,  fight  against  every  sort  of  suppression 
or  restrictive  control  of  right  education,  bring 
pressure  through  political  and  social  channels 
upon  every  teaching  organization  to  teach  history 
aright,  sustain  missions  and  a  new  sort  of  mis- 
sionary, the  missionaries  to  all  mankind  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  idea  of  one  world  civilization  and  one 
world  community;  they  can  promote  and  help  the 
progress  of  historical  and  ethnological  and  politi- 
cal science,  they  can  set  their  faces  against  every 
campaign  of  hate,  racial  suspicion,  and  patriotic 
falsehood,  they  can  refuse,  they  are  bound  to  re- 
fuse, obedience  to  any  public  authority  which 
oppresses  and  embitters  class  against  class,  race 
against  race,  and  people  against  people.  A  bel- 
ligerent government  as  such,  they  can  refuse  to 
obey;  and  they  can  refuse  to  help  or  suffer  any 
military  preparations  that  are  not  directed  wholly 
and  plainly  to  preserving  the  peace  of  the  world. 
This  is  the  plain  duty  of  every  honest  man  to-day, 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       41 

to  judge  his  magistrate  before  lie  obeys  him,  and 
to  render  unto  Caesar  nothing  that  he  owes  to  God 
and  mankind.  And  those  who  are  awakened  to 
the  full  significance  of  the  vast  creative  effort 
now  before  mankind  will  set  themselves  particu- 
larly to  revise  the  common  moral  judgment  upon 
many  acts  and  methods  of  living  that  obstruct 
the  way  of  the  world-state.  Blatant,  aggressive 
patriotism  and  the  incitements  against  foreign 
peoples  that  usually  go  with  it,  are  just  as  crimi- 
nal and  far  more  injurious  to  our  race  than,  for 
example,  indecent  provocations  and  open  incite- 
ments to  sexual  vice ;  they  produce  a  much  beast- 
lier and  crueller  state  of  mind,  and  they  deserve 
at  least  an  equal  condemnation.  Yet  you  will  find 
even  priests  and  clergymen  to-day  rousing  the 
war  passions  of  their  flocks  and  preaching  con- 
flict from  the  very  steps  of  the  altar. 

So  far  the  movement  towards  a  world-state  has 
lacked  any  driving  power  of  passion.  We  have 
been  passing  through  a  phase  of  intellectual  re- 
vision. The  idea  of  a  world  unity  and  brother- 
hood has  come  back  again  into  the  world  almost 
apologetically,  deferentially,  asking  for  the  kind 
words  of  successful  politicians  and  for  a  gesture 
of  patronage  from  kings.  Yet  this  demand  for 
one  world-empire  of  righteousness  was  inherent  in 
the  teachings  of  Buddha,  it  flashed  for  a  little 
while  behind  the  sword  of  Islam,  it  is  the  embodi- 
ment in  earthly  affairs  of  the  spirit  of  Christ.  It 
is  a  call  to  men  for  service  as  of  right,  it  is  not  an 
appeal  to  them  that  they  may  refuse,  not  a  voice 


42         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

that  they  may  disregard.  It  is  too  great  a  thing 
to  hover  for  long  thus  deferentially  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  active  world  it  has  come  to  save. 
To-day  the  world-state  says :  " Please  listen;  make 
way  for  me."  To-morrow  it  will  say:  "Make 
way  for  me,  little  people."  The  day  is  not  re- 
mote when  disregardful  "patriotic"  men  hector- 
ing in  the  crowd  will  be  twisted  round  perforce  to 
the  light  they  refuse  to  see.  First  comes  the  idea 
and  then  slowly  the  full  comprehension  of  the  idea, 
comes  realization,  and  with  that  realization  will 
come  a  kindling  anger  at  the  vulgarity,  the  mean- 
ness, the  greed  and  baseness  and  utter  stupidity 
that  refuses  to  attend  to  this  clear  voice,  this  defi- 
nite demand  of  our  racial  necessity.  To-day  we 
teach,  but  as  understanding  grows  we  must  begin 
to  act.  We  must  put  ourselves  and  our  rulers  and 
our  fellow  men  on  trial.  We  must  ask:  "What 
have  you  done,  and  what  are  you  doing  to  help  or 
hinder  the  peace  and  order  of  mankind  ? "  A  time 
will  come  when  a  politician  who  has  wilfully  made 
war  and  promoted  international  dissension  will  be 
as  sure  of  the  dock  and  much  surer  of  the  noose 
than  a  private  homicide.  It  is  not  reasonable  that 
those  who  gamble  with  men's  lives  should  not 
stake  their  own.  The  service  of  the  world-state 
calls  for  much  more  than  passive  resistance  to 
belligerent  authorities,  for  much  more  than  exem- 
plary martyrdoms.  It  calls  for  the  greater  effort 
of  active  interference  with  mischievous  men.  "I 
will  believe  in  the  League  of  Nations,"  one  man 
has  written,  "when  men  will  fight  for  it."    For 


THE  PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  MANKIND       43 

this  League  of  Nations  at  Geneva,  this  little  corner 
of  Balfourian  jobs  and  gentility,  no  man  would 
dream  of  fighting,  but  for  the  great  state  of  man- 
kind, men  will  presently  be  very  ready  to  fight 
and,  as  the  thing  may  go,  either  to  kill  or  die. 
Things  must  come  in  their  order;  first  the  idea, 
then  the  kindling  of  imaginations,  then  the  world- 
wide battle.  We  who  live  in  the  bleak  days  after 
a  great  crisis,  need  be  no  more  discouraged  by  the 
apparent  indifference  of  the  present  time  than 
are  fields  that  are  ploughed  and  sown  by  the  wet 
days  of  February  and  the  cold  indifference  of  the 
winds  of  early  March.  The  ploughing  has  been 
done,  and  the  seed  is  in  the  ground,  and  the  world- 
state  stirs  in  a  multitude  of  germinating  minds. 


II 

THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE  * 

In  this  paper,  I  want  to  tell  you  of  the  idea  that 
now  shapes  and  dominates  my  public  life — the 
idea  of  a  world  politically  united — of  a  world  se- 
curely and  permanently  at  peace.  And  I  want  to 
say  what  I  have  to  say,  so  far  as  regards  the  main 
argument  of  it,  as  accurately  and  plainly  as  possi- 
ble, without  any  eloquence  or  flourishes. 

When  I  first  planned  this  paper,  I  chose  as  the 
title  '  <  The  Utopia  of  a  World  State.  ' '  Well,  there 
is  something  a  little  too  flimsy  and  unpracticable 
about  that  word  Utopia.  To  most  people  Utopia 
conveys  the  idea  of  a  high-toned  political  and 
ethical  dream — agreeable  and  edifying,  no  doubt, 
but  of  no  practical  value  whatever.  What  I  have 
to  talk  about  this  evening  is  not  a  bit  dreamlike, 
it  is  about  real  dangers  and  urgent  necessities.  It 
is  a  Project  and  not  a  Utopia.  It  may  be  a  vast 
and  impossible  Project.  It  may  be  a  hopeless 
Project.  But  if  it  fails  our  Civilization  fails. 
And  so  I  have  called  this  paper  not  the  Utopia 
but  The  Project  of  a  World  State. 

There  are  some  things  that  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  tell  without  seeming  to  scream  and  exag- 

*  Written  originally  aa  a  lecture  to  be  delivered  in  America. 
44 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        45 

gerate,  and  yet  these  things  may  be  in  reality  the 
soberest  matter  of  fact.  I  want  to  say  that  this 
civilization  in  which  we  are  living  is  tumbling 
down,  and  I  think  tumbling  down  very  fast;  that 
I  think  rapid  enormous  efforts  will  be  needed  to 
save  it ;  and  that  I  see  no  such  efforts  being  made 
at  the  present  time.  I  do  not  know  if  these  words 
convey  any  concrete  ideas  to  the  reader's  mind. 
There  are  statements  that  can  open  such  unfa- 
miliar vistas  as  to  seem  devoid  of  any  real  prac- 
tical meaning  at  all,  and  this  I  think  may  be  one  of 
them. 

In  the  past  year  I  have  been  going  about  Eu- 
rope. I  have  had  glimpses  of  a  new  phase  of  this 
civilization  of  ours — a  new  phase  that  would  have 
sounded  like  a  fantastic  dream  if  one  had  told 
about  it  ten  years  ago.  I  have  seen  a  great  city 
that  had  over  two  million  inhabitants,  dying  and 
dying  with  incredible  rapidity.  In  1914  I  was  in 
the  city  of  St.  Petersburg  and  it  seemed  as  safe 
and  orderly  a  great  city  as  yours.  I  went  thither 
in  comfortable  and  punctual  trains.  I  stayed  in 
an  hotel  as  well  equipped  and  managed  as  any 
American  hotel.  I  went  to  dine  with  and  visit 
households  of  cultivated  people.  I  walked  along 
streets  of  brilliantly  lit  and  well-furnished  shops. 
It  was,  in  fact,  much  the  same  sort  of  life  that  you 
are  living  here  to-day — a  part  of  our  (then) 
world-wide  modern  civilization. 

I  revisited  these  things  last  summer.  I  found 
such  a  spectacle  of  decay  that  it  seems  almost  im- 
possible to  describe  it  to  those  who  have  never 


46        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

seen  the  like.  Streets  with  great  holes  where  the 
drains  had  fallen  in.  Stretches  of  roadway  from 
which  the  wood  paving  had  been  torn  for  fire- 
wood. Lampposts  that  had  been  knocked  over 
lying  as  they  were  left,  without  an  attempt  to  set 
them  up  again.  Shops  and  markets  deserted  and 
decayed  and  ruinous.  Not  closed  shops  but  aban- 
doned shops,  as  abandoned-looking  as  an  old  boot 
or  an  old  can  by  the  wayside.  The  railways  fall- 
ing out  of  use.  A  population  of  half  a  million 
where  formerly  there  had  been  two.  A  strangely 
homeless  city,  a  city  of  discomforts  and  anxieties, 
a  city  of  want  and  ill-health  and  death.  Such  was 
Petersburg  in  1920. 

I  know  there  are  people  who  have  a  quick  and 
glib  explanation  of  this  vast  and  awe-inspiring 
spectacle  of  a  great  empire  in  collapse.  They  say 
it  is  Bolshevism  has  caused  all  this  destruction. 
But  I  hope  to  show  here,  among  other  more  im- 
portant things,  that  Bolshevism  is  merely  a  part 
of  this  immense  collapse — that  the  overthrow  of  a 
huge  civilized  organization  needs  some  more  com- 
prehensive explanation  than  that  a  little  man 
named  Lenin  was  able  to  get  from  Geneva  to 
Russia  at  a  particular  crisis  in  Bussian  history. 
And  particularly  is  it  to  be  noted  that  this  im- 
mense destruction  of  civilized  life  has  not  been 
confined  to  Bussia  or  to  regions  under  Bolshevik 
rule.  Austria  and  Hungary  present  spectacles 
hardly  less  desolating  than  Bussia.  There  is  a 
conspicuous  ebb  in  civilization  in  Eastern  Ger- 
many.   And  even  when  you  come  to  France  and 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        47 

Italy  and  Ireland  there  are  cities,  townships, 
whole  wide  regions,  where  you  can  say :  This  has 
gone  back  since  1914  and  it  is  still  going  back  in 
material  prosperity,  in  health,  in  social  order. 

Even  in  England  and  Scotland,  in  Holland  and 
Denmark  and  Sweden,  it  is  hard  to  determine 
whether  things  are  stagnant  or  moving  forward  or 
moving  back — they  are  certainly  not  going  ahead 
as  they  were  before  1913-14.  The  feeling  in  Eng- 
land is  rather  like  the  feeling  of  a  man  who  is  not 
quite  sure  whether  he  has  caught  a  slight  chill  or 
whether  he  is  in  the  opening  stage  of  a  serious 
illness. 

Now  what  I  want  to  do  here  is  to  theorize 
about  this  shadow,  this  chill  and  arrest,  that  seems 
to  have  come  upon  the  flourishing  and  expanding 
civilization  in  which  all  of  us  were  born  and 
reared.  I  want  to  put  a  particular  view  of  what 
is  happening  before  you,  and  what  it  is  that  we 
are  up  against.  I  want  to  put  before  you  for 
your  judgment  the  view  that  this  overstrain  and 
breaking  down  and  stoppage  of  the  great  uprush 
of  civilization  that  has  gone  on  for  the  past  three 
centuries  is  due  to  the  same  forces  and  is  the  logi- 
cal outcome  of  the  same  forces  that  led  to  that 
uprush,  to  that  tremendous  expansion  of  human 
knowledge  and  power  and  life.  And  that  that 
breaking  up  is  an  inevitable  thing  unless  we  meet 
it  by  a  very  great  effort  of  a  particular  kind. 

Now  the  gist  of  my  case  is  this :  That  the  civ- 
ilization of  the  past  three  centuries  has  produced 
a  great  store  of  scientific  knowledge,  and  that  thia 


48        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

scientific  knowledge  has  altered  the  material  scale 
of  human  affairs  and  enormously  enlarged  the 
physical  range  of  human  activities,  but  that  there 
has  been  no  adequate  adjustment  of  men's  politi- 
cal ideas  to  the  new  conditions. 

This  adjustment  is  a  subtle  and  a  difficult  task. 
It  is  also  a  greatly  neglected  task.  And  upon  the 
possibility  of  our  making  this  adjustment  depends 
the  issue  whether  the  ebb  of  civilizing  energy,  the 
actual  smashing  and  breaking  down  of  modern 
civilization,  which  has  already  gone  very  far  in- 
deed in  Eussia  and  which  is  going  on  in  most  of 
Eastern  and  Central  Europe,  extends  to  the  whole 
civilized  world. 

Let  me  make  a  very  rough  and  small  scale  anal- 
ysis of  what  is  happening  to  the  world  to-day. 
And  let  us  disregard  many  very  important  issues 
and  concentrate  upon  the  chief,  most  typical  issue, 
the  revolution  in  the  facilities  of  locomotion  and 
communication  that  has  occurred  to  the  world  and 
the  consequences  of  that  revolution.  For  the  in- 
ternational problem  to-day  is  essentially  depend- 
ent upon  the  question  of  transport  and  communi- 
cation— all  others  are  subordinate  to  that.  I  shall 
particularly  call  your  attention  to  certain  wide 
differences  between  the  American  case  and  the 
old-world  case  in  this  matter. 

It  is  not  understood  clearly  enough  at  the  pres- 
ent time  how  different  is  the  American  interna- 
tional problem  from  the  European  international 
problem,  and  how  inevitable  it  is  that  America  and 
Europe  should  approach  international  problems 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        49 

from  a  different  angle  and  in  a  different  spirit. 
Both  lines  of  thought  and  experience  do,  I  be- 
lieve, lead  at  last  to  the  world  state,  but  they  get 
there  by  a  different  route  and  in  a  different 
manner. 

The  idea  that  the  government  of  the  United 
States  can  take  its  place  side  by  side  with  the 
governments  of  the  old  world  on  terms  of  equality 
with  those  governments  in  order  to  organize  the 
peace  of  the  world,  is,  I  believe,  a  mistaken  and 
unworkable  idea.  I  shall  argue  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  and  the  community  of 
the  United  States  are  things  different  politically 
and  mentally  from  those  of  the  states  of  the  old 
world,  and  that  the  role  they  are  destined  to  play 
in  the  development  of  a  world  state  of  mankind 
is  essentially  a  distinctive  one.  And  I  shall  try 
to  show  cause  for  regarding  the  very  noble  and 
splendid  project  of  a  world-wide  League  of  Na- 
tions that  has  held  the  attention  of  the  world  for 
the  past  three  years,  as  one  that  is,  at  once,  a  little 
too  much  for  complete  American  participation, 
and  not  sufficient  for  the  urgent  needs  of  Europe. 
It  is  not  really  so  practicable  and  reasonable  a 
proposition  as  it  seemed  at  first. 

The  idea  of  a  world  state,  though  it  looks  a  far 
greater  and  more  difficult  project,  is,  in  the  long 
run,  a  sounder  and  more  hopeful  proposition. 

Now  let  me  make  myself  as  clear  as  I  can  be 
about  the  central  idea  upon  which  the  whole  of  the 
arguments  in  this  lecture  rests.  It  is  this :  forgive 
me  for  a  repetition — that  there  has  been  a  com- 


50        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

plete  alteration  in  the  range  and  power  of  human 
activities  in  the  last  hundred  years.  Men  can 
react  upon  men  with  a  rapidity  and  at  a  distance 
inconceivable  a  hundred  years  ago.  This  is 
particularly  the  case  with  locomotion  and  methods 
of  communication  generally.  I  will  not  remind 
you  in  any  detail  of  facts  with  which  you  are 
familiar;  how  that  in  the  time  of  Napoleon  the 
most  rapid  travel  possible  of  the  great  conqueror 
himself  did  not  average  all  over  as  much  as  four 
and  a  half  miles  an  hour.  A  hundred  and  seven 
miles  a  day  for  thirteen  days — the  pace  of  his  rush 
from  Vilna  to  Paris  after  the  Moscow  disaster — 
was  regarded  as  a  triumph  of  speed.  In  those 
days  too,  it  was  a  marvel  that  by  means  of  sema- 
phores it  was  possible  to  transmit  a  short  mes- 
sage from  London  to  Portsmouth  in  the  course 
of  an  hour  or  so. 

Since  then  we  have  seen  a  development  of  teleg- 
raphy that  has  at  last  made  news  almost  simul- 
taneous about  the  world,  and  a  steady  increase  in 
the  rate  of  travel  until,  as  we  worked  it  out  in  the 
Civil  Air  Transport  Committee  in  London,  it  is 
possible,  if  not  at  present  practicable,  to  fly  from 
London  to  Australia,  half  way  round  the  earth, 
in  about  eight  days.  I  say  possible,  but  not  prac- 
ticable, because  at  present  properly  surveyed 
routes,  landing  grounds  and  adequate  supplies  of 
petrol  and  spare  parts  do  not  exist.  Given  those 
things,  that  journey  could  be  done  now  in  the 
time  I  have  stated.  This  tremendous  change  in 
the  range  of  human  activities  involves  changes  in 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        51 

the  conditions  of  our  political  life  that  we  are  only- 
beginning  to  work  out  to  their  proper  conse- 
quences to-day. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  America,  which  owes 
most  to  this  acceleration  in  locomotion,  has  felt  it 
least.  The  United  States  have  taken  the  railway, 
the  river  steamboat,  the  telegraph  and  so  forth 
as  though  they  were  a  natural  part  of  their 
growth.  They  were  not.  These  things  happened 
to  come  along  just  in  time  to  save  American  unity. 
The  United  States  of  to-day  were  made  first  by  the 
river  steamboat,  and  then  by  the  railway.  With- 
out these  things,  the  present  United  States,  this 
vast  continental  nation,  would  have  been  alto- 
gether impossible.  The  westward  flow  of  popu- 
lation would  have  been  far  more  sluggish.  It 
might  never  have  crossed  the  great  central  plains. 
It  took,  you  will  remember,  nearly  two  hundred 
years  for  effective  settlement  to  reach  from  the 
coast  to  the  Missouri,  much  less  than  half-way 
across  the  continent.  The  first  state  established 
beyond  the  river  was  the  steamboat  state  of  Mis- 
souri in  1821.  But  the  rest  of  the  distance  to  the 
Pacific  was  done  in  a  few  decades. 

If  we  had  the  resources  of  the  cinema  it 
would  be  interesting  to  show  a  map  of  North 
America  year  by  year  from  1600  onward,  with 
little  dots  to  represent  hundreds  of  people,  each 
dot  a  hundred,  and  stars  to  represent  cities  of  a 
hundred  thousand  people. 

For  two  hundred  years  you  would  see  that  stip- 
pling creeping  slowly  along  the  coastal  districts 


52         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

and  navigable  waters,  spreading  still  more  gradu- 
ally into  Indiana,  Kentucky,  and  so  forth.  Then 
somewhere  about  1810  would  come  a  change. 
Things  would  get  more  lively  along  the  river 
courses.  The  dots  would  be  multiplying  and 
spreading.  That  would  be  the  steamboat.  The 
pioneer  dots  would  be  spreading  soon  from  a  num- 
ber of  jumping-off  places  along  the  great  rivers 
over  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

Then  from  about  1830  onward  would  come  the 
black  lines  of  the  railways,  and  after  that  the  little 
black  dots  would  not  simply  creep  but  run.  They 
would  appear  now  so  rapidly,  it  would  be  almost 
as  though  they  were  being  put  on  by  some  sort  of 
spraying  machine.  And  suddenly  here  and  then 
there  would  appear  the  first  stars  to  indicate  the 
first  great  cities  of  a  hundred  thousand  people. 
First  one  or  two  and  then  a  multitude  of  cities — 
each  like  a  knot  in  the  growing  net  of  the  railways. 

This  is  a  familiar  story.  I  recall  it  to  you  now 
to  enforce  this  point — that  the  growth  of  the 
United  States  is  a  process  that  has  no  precedent 
in  the  world's  history;  it  is  a  new  kind  of  occur- 
rence. Such  a  community  could  not  have  come 
into  existence  before,  and  if  it  had  it  would,  with- 
out railways,  have  certainly  dropped  to  pieces 
long  before  now.  Without  railways  or  telegraph 
it  would  be  far  easier  to  administer  California 
from  Pekin  than  from  Washington.  But  this  great 
population  of  the  United  States  of  America  has 
not  only  grown  outrageously ;  it  has  kept  uniform. 
Nay,  it  has  become  more  uniform.     The  man  of 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE    '    53 

San  Francisco  is  more  like  the  man  of  New  York 
to-day  than  the  man  of  Virginia  was  like  the  man 
of  New  England  a  century  ago.  And  the  process 
of  assimilation  goes  on  unimpeded.  The  United 
States  is  being  woven  by  railway,  by  telegraph, 
more  and  more  into  one  vast  human  unity,  speak- 
ing, thinking,  and  acting  harmoniously  with  itself. 
Soon  aviation  will  be  helping  in  the  work. 

Now  this  great  community  of  the  United  States 
is,  I  repeat,  an  altogether  new  thing  in  history. 
There  have  been  great  empires  before  with  popu- 
lations exceeding  100  millions,  but  these  were  asso- 
ciations of  divergent«peoples ;  there  has  never  been 
one  single  people  on  this  scale  before.  We  want  a 
new  term  for  this  new  thing.  We  call  the  United 
States  a  country,  just  as  we  call  France  or  Hol- 
land a  country.  But  really  the  two  things  are  as 
different  as  an  automobile  and  a  one-horse  shay. 
They  are  the  creations  of  different  periods  and 
different  conditions;  they  are  going  to  work  at 
a  different  pace  and  in  an  entirely  different  way. 
If  you  propose — as  I  gather  some  of  the  League 
of  Nations  people  propose — to  push  the  Peace  of 
the  World  along  on  a  combination  of  these  two 
sorts  of  vehicle,  I  venture  to  think  the  Peace  of 
the  World  will  be  subjected  to  some  very  consid- 
erable strains. 

Let  me  now  make  a  brief  comparison  between 
the  American  and  the  European  situation  in  rela- 
tion to  these  vital  matters,  locomotion  and  the 
general  means  of  communicating.  I  said  just  now 
that  the  United  States  of  America  owe  most  to  the 


54        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

revolution  in  locomotion  and  have  felt  it  least. 
•  Europe  on  the  other  hand  owes  least  to  the  revolu- 
tion in  locomotion  and  has  felt  it  most.  The  revo- 
lution in  locomotion  found  the  United  States  of 
America  a  fringe  of  population  on  the  sea  mar- 
gins of  a  great  rich  virgin  empty  country  into 
which  it  desired  to  expand,  and  into  which  it  was 
free  to  expand.  The  steamboat  and  railway 
seemed  to  come  as  a  natural  part  of  that  expan- 
sion. They  came  as  unqualified  blessings.  But 
into  Western  Europe  they  came  as  a  frightful 
nuisance. 

The  States  of  Europe,  excepting  Russia,  were 
already  a  settled,  established  and  balanced  system. 
They  were  living  in  final  and  conclusive  boundaries 
with  no  further  possibility  of  peaceful  expansion. 
Every  extension  of  a  European  state  involved  a 
war;  it  was  only  possible  through  war.  And  while 
the  limits  to  the  United  States  have  been  set  by 
the  steamship  and  the  railroad,  the  limits  to  the 
European  sovereign  states  were  drawn  at  a  much 
earlier  time.  They  were  drawn  by  the  horse,  and 
particularly  the  coach-horse  travelling  along  the 
high  road.  If  you  will  examine  a  series  of  political 
maps  of  Europe  for  the  last  two  thousand  years, 
you  will  see  that  there  has  evidently  been  a  definite 
limit  to  the  size  of  sovereign  states  through  all  that 
time,  due  to  the  impossibility  of  keeping  them 
together  because  of  the  difficulty  of  intercommuni- 
cation if  they  grew  bigger.  And  this  was  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  there  were  two  great  unifying 
ideas  present  in  meu  *s  minds  in  Europe  through- 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        55 

out  that  period,  namely,  the  unifying  idea  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  the  unifying  idea  of  Christen- 
dom. Both  these  ideas  tended  to  make  Europe 
one,  but  the  difficulties  of  communication  defeated 
that  tendency.  It  is  quite  interesting  to  watch  the 
adventures  of  what  is  called  first  the  Roman  Em- 
pire and  afterwards  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  in  a 
series  of  historical  maps.  It  keeps  expanding  and 
then  dropping  to  pieces  again.  It  is  like  the  efforts 
of  someone  who  is  trying  to  pack  up  a  parcel  which 
is  much  tooli  big,  in  wet  blotting  paper.  The  cohe- 
sion was  inadequate.  And  so  it  was  that  the  eight- 
eenth century  found  Europe  still  divided  up  into 
what  I  may  perhaps  call  these  high-road  and 
coach-horse  states,  each  with  a  highly  developed 
foreign  policy,  each  with  an  intense  sense  of  na- 
tional difference  and  each  with  intense  traditional 
antagonisms. 

Then  came  this  revolution  in  the  means  of  loco- 
motion, which  has  increased  the  normal  range  of 
human  activity  at  least  ten  times.  The  effect  of 
that  in  America  was  opportunity;  the  effect  of  it 
in  Europe  was  congestion.  It  is  as  if  some  rather 
careless  worker  of  miracles  had  decided  suddenly 
to  make  giants  of  a  score  of  ordinary  men,  and 
chose  the  moment  for  the  miracle  when  they  were 
all  with  one  exception  strap-hanging  in  a  street 
car.  The  United  States  was  that  fortunate  ex- 
ception. 

Now  this  is  what  modern  civilization  has  come 
up  against,  and  it  is  the  essential  riddle  of  the 
mttfern  gphfrnx  which  must  be  solved  if  we  are  to 


56        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

live.  All  the  European  boundaries  of  to-day  are 
impossibly  small  for  modern  conditions.  And  they 
are  sustained  by  an  intensity  of  ancient  tradition 
and  patriotic  passion.  .  .  .  That  is  where  we 
stand. 

The  citizens  of  the  United  States  of  America  are 
not  without  their  experience  in  this  matter.  The 
crisis  of  the  national  history  of  the  American 
community,  the  war  between  Union  and  Secession, 
was  essentially  a  crisis  between  the  great  state  of 
the  new  age  and  the  local  feeling  of  an  earlier 
period.  But  Union  triumphed.  Americans  live 
now  in  a  generation  that  has  almost  forgotten  that 
there  once  seemed  a  possibility  that  the  map  of 
North  America  might  be  broken  up  at  last  into  as 
many  communities  as  the  map  of  Europe.  Except 
by  foreign  travel,  the  present  generation  of  Ameri- 
cans can  have  no  idea  of  the  net  of  vexations  and 
limitations  in  which  Europeans  are  living  at  the 
present  time  because  of  their  political  disunion. 

Let  me  take  a  small  but  quite  significant  set  of 
differences,  the  inconveniences  of  travel  upon  a 
journey  of  a  little  over  a  thousand  miles.  They 
are  in  themselves  petty  inconveniences,  but  they 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  net  that  is  making  free 
civilized  life  in  Europe  more  and  more  impossible. 

Take  first  the  American  case.  An  American 
wants  to  travel  from  New  York  to  St.  Louis.  He 
looks  up  the  next  train,  packs  his  bag,  gets  aboard 
a  sleeper  and  turns  out  at  St.  Louis  next  day 
ready  for  business. 

Take  now  the  European  parallel.    A  European 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        57 

wants  to  travel  from  London  to  Warsaw.  Now 
that  is  a  shorter  distance  by  fifty  or  sixty  miles 
than  the  distance  from  New  York  to  St.  Louis. 
Will  he  pack  his  bag,  get  aboard  a  train  and  go 
there  ?  He  will  not.  He  will  have  to  get  a  pass- 
port, and  getting  a  passport  involves  all  sorts  of 
tiresome  little  errands.  One  has  to  go  to  a  photog- 
rapher, for  example,  to  get  photographs  to  stick 
on  the  passport.  The  good  European  has  then  to 
take  his  passport  to  the  French  representative  in 
London  for  a  French  visa,  or,  if  he  is  going 
through  Belgium,  for  a  Belgian  visa.  After  that 
he  must  get  a  German  visa.  Then  he  must  go 
round  to  the  Czecho- Slovak  office  for  a  Czecho- 
slovak visa.    Finally  will»come  the  Polish  visa. 

Each  of  these  endorsements  necessitates  some- 
thing vexatious,  personal  attendance,  photogra- 
phy, stamps,  rubber  stamps,  mysterious  signa- 
tures and  the  like,  and  always  the  payment  of  fees. 
Also  they  necessitate  delays.  The  other  day  I  had 
occasion  to  go  to  Moscow,  and  I  learnt  that  it 
takes  three  weeks  to  get  a  visa  for  Finland  and 
three  weeks  to  get  a  visa  for  Esthonia.  You  see 
you  can't  travel  about  Europe  at  all  without  weeks 
and  weeks  of  preparation.  The  preparations  for 
a  little  journey  to  Russia  the  other  day  took  three 
whole  days  out  of  my  life,  cost  me  several  pounds 
in  stamps  and  fees,  and  five  in  bribery. 

Ultimately,  however,  the  good  European  is  free 
to  start.  Arriving  at  the  French  frontier  in  an 
hour  or  so,  he  will  be  held  up  for  a  long  customs* 
examination.    Also  he  will  need  to  change  some 


58        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

of  his  money  into  francs.  His  English  money  will 
be  no  good  in  France.  The  exchange  in  Europe 
is  always  fluctuating,  and  he  will  be  cheated  on  lie 
exchange.  All  European  countries,  including  my 
own,  cheat  travellers  on  the  exchange — that  is 
apparently  what  the  exchange  is  for. 

He  will  then  travel  for  a  few  hours  to  the  Ger- 
man frontier.  There  he  will  be  bundled  out  again. 
The  French  will  investigate  him  closely  to  see  that 
he  is  not  carrying  gold  or  large  sums  of  money 
out  of  France.  Then  he  will  be  handed  over  to  the 
Germans.  He  will  go  through  the  same  business 
with  the  customs  and  the  same  business  with  the 
money.  His  French  money  is  no  further  use  to 
him  and  he  must  get  German.  A  few  more  hours 
and  he  will  arrive  on  the  frontier  of  Bohemia. 
Same  search  for  gold.  Then  customs '  examination 
and  change  of  money  again.  A  few  hours  more 
and  he  will  be  in  Poland.  Search  for  gold,  cus- 
toms, fresh  money. 

As  most  of  these  countries  are  pursuing  differ- 
ent railway  policies,  he  will  probably  have  to 
change  trains  and  rebook  his  luggage  three  or  four 
times.  The  trains  may  be  ingeniously  contrived 
not  to  connect  so  as  to  force  him  to  take  some 
longer  route  politically  favoured  by  one  of  the  in- 
tervening states.  He  will  be  lucky  if  he  gets  to 
Warsaw  in  four  days. 

Arrived  in  "Warsaw,  he  will  probably  need  a 
permit  to  stay  there,  and  he  will  certainly  need  no 
end  of  permits  to  leave. 

Now  here  is  a  fuss  over  a  fiddling  little  journey 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        59 

of  1,100  miles.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  book- 
ings from  London  to  Warsaw  are  infinitesimal  in 
comparison  with  the  bookings  from  New  York  to 
St.  Louis?  But  what  I  have  noted  here  are  only 
the  normal  inconveniences  of  the  traveller.  They 
are  by  no  means  the  most  serious  inconveniences. 

The  same  obstructions  that  hamper  the  free 
movement  of  a  traveller,  hamper  the  movement 
of  foodstuffs  and  all  sorts  of  merchandise  in  a 
much  greater  degree.  Everywhere  in  Europe 
trade  is  being  throttled  by  tariffs  and  crippled  by 
the  St.  Vitus'  dance  of  the  exchanges.  Each  of 
these  European  sovereign  states  turns  out  paper 
money  at  its  own  sweet  will.  Last  summer  I  went 
to  Prague  and  exchanged  pounds  for  kroners. 
They  ought  to  have  been  25  to  the  pound.  On 
Monday  they  were  180  to  the  pound:  on  Friday 
169.  They  jump  about  between  220  and  150,  and 
everybody  is  inconvenienced  except  the  bankers 
and  money  changers.  And  this  uncertain  exchange 
diverts  considerable  amounts  of  money  that  should 
be  stimulating  business  enterprise  into  a  barren 
and  mischievous  gambling  with  the  circulation. 

Between  each  one  of  these  compressed  European 
countries  the  movement  of  food  or  labour  is  still 
more  blocked  and  impeded.  And  in  addition  to 
these  nuisances  of  national  tariffs  and  independ- 
ent national  coinages  at  every  few  score  miles, 
Europe  is  extraordinarily  crippled  by  its  want  of 
any  central  authority  to  manage  the  most  ele- 
mentary collective  interests;  the  control  of  vice, 


60        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

for  example ;  the  handling  of  infectious  diseases ; 
the  suppression  of  international  criminals. 

Europe  is  now  confronted  by  a  new  problem-  - 
the  problem  of  air  transport.  So  far  as  I  can  se3, 
air  transport  is  going  to  be  strangled  in  Europe 
by  international  difficulties.  One  can  fly  comfort- 
i  ably  and  safely  from  London  to  Paris  in  two  or 
three  hours.  But  the  passport  preliminaries  will 
take  days  beforehand. 

The  other  day  I  wanted  to  get  quickly  to  Beval 
in  Esthonia  from  England  and  back  again.  The 
distance  is  about  the  same  as  from  Boston  to  Min- 
neapolis, and  it  could  be  done  comfortably  in  10 
or  12  hours'  flying.  I  proposed  to  the  Handley, 
Page  Company  that  they  should  arrange  this  for 
me.  They  explained  that  they  had  no  power  to 
fly  beyond  Amsterdam  in  Holland ;  thence  it  might 
be  possible  to  get  a  German  plane  to  Hamburg, 
and  thence  again  a  Danish  p]ane  to  Copenhagen — 
leaving  about  500  miles  which  were  too  compli- 
cated politically  to  fly.  Each  stoppage  would  in- 
volve passport  and  other  difficulties.  In  the  end 
it  took  me  five  days  to  get  to  Reval  and  seven  dayit 
to  get  back.  In  Europe,  with  its  present  frontiers, 
flying  is  not  worth  having.  It  can  never  be  worth 
having — it  can  never  be  worked  successfully — until 
it  is  worked  as  at  least  a  pan-European  affair. 

All  these  are  the  normal  inconveniences  of  the 
national  divisions  of  Europe  in  peace  time.  By 
themselves  they  are  strangling  all  hope  of  eco- 
nomic recovery.  For  Europe  is  not  getting  on  to 
its  feet  economically.    Only  a  united  effort  can 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        61 

effect  that.  But  along  each  of  the  ridiculously 
restricted  frontiers  into  which  the  European  coun- 
tries are  packed,  lies  also  the  possibility  of  war. 
National  independence  means  the  right  to  declare 
war.  And  so  each  of  these  packed  and  strangu- 
lated European  countries  is  obliged,  by  its  blessed 
independence,  to  maintain  as  big  an  army  and  as 
big  a  military  equipment  as  its  bankrupt  condition 
— for  we  are  all  bankrupt — permits. 

Since  the  end  of  the  great  war,  nothing  has 
been  done  of  any  real  value  to  ensure  any  Euro- 
pean country  against  the  threat  of  war,  and  noth- 
ing will  be  done,  and  nothing  can  be  done  to  lift 
that  threat,  so  long  as  the  idea  of  national  inde- 
pendence overrides  all  other  considerations. 

And  again,  it  is  a  little  difficult  for  a  mind  accus- 
tomed to  American  conditions,  to  realize  what 
modern  war  will  mean  in  Europe. 

Not  one  of  these  sovereign  European  states  I 
have  named  between  London  and  Warsaw  is  any 
larger  than  the  one  single  American  state  of 
Texas,  and  not  one  has  a  capital  that  cannot  be 
effectively  bombed  by  aeroplane  raiders  from  its 
frontier  within  five  or  six  hours  of  a  declaration 
of  war.  We  can  fly  from  London  to  Paris  in  two  or 
three  hours.  And  the  aerial  bombs  of  to-day,  I 
can  assure  you,  will  make  the  biggest  bombs  of 
1918  seem  like  little  crackers.  Over  all  these  Euro- 
pean countries  broods  this  immediate  threat  of  a 
warfare  that  will  strain  and  torment  the  nerves  of 
every  living  man,  woman  or  child  in  the  countries 
affected.    Nothing  of  the  sort  can  approach  the 


62        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

American  citizen  except  after  a  long  warning. 
The  worst  war  that  could  happen  to  any  North 
American  country  would  merely  touch  its  coasts. 
Now  I  have  dwelt  on  these  differences  between 
America  and  Europe  because  they  involve  an  ab- 
solute difference  in  outlook  towards  world  peace 
projects,  towards  leagues  of  nations,  world  states 
and  the  like,  between  the  American  and  the 
European. 

^  The  American  lives  in  a  political  unity  on  the 
big  modern  scale.  He  can  go  on  comfortably  for 
a  hundred  years  yet  before  he  begins  to  feel  tight 
in  his  political  skin,  and  before  he  begins  to  feel 
the  threat  of  immediate  warfare  close  to  his  do- 
mestic life.  He  believes  by  experience  in  peace, 
but  he  feels  under  no  passionate  urgency  to  organ- 
ize it.  So  far  as  he  himself  is  concerned,  he  has 
got  peace  organized  for  a  good  long  time  ahead.  I 
doubt  if  it  would  make  any  very  serious  difference 
for  some  time  in  the  ordinary  daily  life  of  Kansas 
City,  let  us  say,  if  all  Europe  were  reduced  to  a 
desert  in  the  next  five  years. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  the  intelligent  European 
is  up  against  the  unity  of  Europe  problem  night 
and  day.  Europe  cannot  go  on.  European  civili- 
zation cannot  go  on,  unless  that  net  of  boundaries 
which  strangles  her  is  dissolved  away.  The  dif- 
ficulties created  by  language  differences,  by  bit- 
ter national  traditions,  by  bad  political  habits  and 
the  like,  are  no  doubt  stupendous.  But  stupendous 
though  they  are,  they  have  to  be  faced.  Unless 
they  are  overcome,  and  overcome  in  a  very  few 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        63 

years,  Europe — entangled  in  this  net  of  bound- 
aries, and  under  a  perpetual  fear  of  war,  will,  I 
am  convinced,  follow  Russia  and  slide  down  be- 
yond any  hope  of  recovery  into  a  process  of  social 
dissolution  as  profound  and  disastrous  as  that 
which  closed  the  career  of  the  Western  Roman 
Empire. 

The  American  intelligence  and  the  European 
intelligence  approach  this  question  of  a  world 
peace,  therefore,  from  an  entirely  different  angle 
and  in  an  entirely  different  spirit.  To  the  Ameri- 
can in  the  blessed  ease  of  his  great  unbroken  ter- 
ritory, it  seems  a  matter  simply  of  making  his 
own  ample  securities  world-wide  by  treaties  of 
arbitration  and  such-like  simple  agreements.  And 
my  impression  is  that  he  thinks  of  Europeans  as 
living  under  precisely  similar  conditions. 

Nothing  of  that  sort  will  meet  the  problem  of 
the  old  world.  The  European  situation  is  alto- 
gether more  intense  and  tragic  than  the  American, 
Europe  needs  not  treaties  but  a  profound  change 
in  its  political  ideas  and  habits.  Europe  is  satu- 
rated with  narrow  patriotism  like  a  body  saturated 
by  some  evil  inherited  disease.  She  is  haunted  by 
narrow  ambitions  and  ancient  animosities. 

It  is  because  of  this  profound  difference  of  situ- 
ation and  outlook  that  I  am  convinced  of  the  im- 
possibility of  any  common  political  co-operation 
to  organize  a  world  peace  between  America  and 
Europe  at  the  present  time. 

The  American  type  of  state  and  the  European 
type  of  state  are  different  things,  incapable  of  an 


64        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

effectual  alliance;  the  steam  tractor  and  the  ox 
cannot  plough  this  furrow  together.  American 
thought,  American  individuals,  may  no  doubt  play 
a  very  great  part  in  the  task  of  reconstruction  that 
lies  before  Europe,  but  not  the  American  federal 
government  as  a  sovereign  state  among  equal 
states. 

The  United  States  constitute  a  state  on  a  dif- 
ferent scale  and  level  from  any  old  world  state. 
Patriotism  and  the  national  idea  in  America  is  a 
different  thing  and  a  bigger  scale  thing  than  the 
patriotism  and  national  idea  in  any  old  world 
state. 

Any  League  of  Nations  aiming  at  stability  now, 
would  necessarily  be  a  league  seeking  to  stereo- 
type existing  boundaries  and  existing  national 
ideas.  Now  these  boundaries  and  these  ideas  are 
just  what  have  to  be  got  rid  of  at  any  cost.  Be- 
fore Europe  can  get  on  to  a  level  and  on  to  equal 
terms  with  the  United  States,  the  European  com- 
munities have  to  go  through  a  process  that  Amer- 
ica went  through — under  much  easier  conditions — 
a  century  and  a  half  ago.  They  have  to  repeat,  on 
a  much  greater  scale  and  against  prof ounder  prej- 
udices, the  feat  of  understanding  and  readjust- 
ment that  was  accomplished  by  the  American  peo- 
ple between  1781  and  1788. 

As  you  will  all  remember,  these  States  after 
they  had  decided  upon  Independence,  framed  cer- 
tain Articles  of  Confederation;  they  were  articles 
of  confederation  between  thirteen  nations,  between 
the  people  of  Massachusetts,  the  people  of  Vir- 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        65 

ginia,  the  people  of  Georgia,  and  so  forth — thir- 
teen distinct  and  separate  sovereign  peoples. 
They  made  a  Union  so  lax  and  feeble  that  it  could 
neither  keep  order  at  home  nor  maintain  respect 
abroad.  Then  they  produced  another  constitu- 
tion. They  swept  aside  all  that  talk  about  the  peo- 
ple of  Massachusetts,  the  people  of  Virginia,  and 
the  rest  of  their  thirteen  nations.  They  based  their 
union  on  a  wider  idea:  the  people  of  the  United 
States. 

Now  Europe,  if  it  is  not  to  sink  down  to  anar- 
chy, has  to  do  a  parallel  thing.  If  Europe  is  to 
be  saved  from  ultimate  disaster,  Europe  has  to 
stop  thinking  in  terms  of  the  people  of  France, 
the  people  of  England,  the  people  of  Germany, 
the  French,  the  British,  the  Germans,  and  so  forth. 
Europe  has  to  think  at  least  of  the  people  of 
Europe,  if  not  of  the  civilized  people  of  the  world. 
If  we  Europeans  cannot  bring  our  minds  to  that, 
there  is  no  hope  for  us.  Only  by  thinking  of  all 
peoples  can  any  people  be  saved  in  Europe.  Fresh 
wars  will  destroy  the  social  fabric  of  Europe,  and 
Europe  will  perish  as  nations,  fighting. 

There  are  many  people  who  think  that  there  is  at 
least  one  political  system  in  the  old  world  which, 
like  the  United  States,  is  large  enough  and  world- 
wide enough  to  go  on  by  itself  under  modern  con- 
ditions for  some  considerable  time.  They  think 
that  the  British  Empire  can,  as  it  were,  stand  out 
of  the  rest  of  the  Old  World  as  a  self-sufficient 
system.  They  think  that  it  can  stand  out  freely 
as  the  United  States  can  stand  out,  and  that  these 


66         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

two  English-speaking  powers  have  merely  to  agree 
together  to  dominate  and  keep  the  peace  of  the 
world. 

Let  me  give  a  little  attention  to  this  idea.  It 
is  I  believe  a  wrong  idea.,  and  one  that  may  be 
very  disastrous  to  our  common  English-speaking 
culture  if  it  is  too  fondly  cherished. 

There  can  be  no  denying  that  the  British  Im- 
perial system  is  a  system  different  in  its  nature 
and  size  from  a  typical  European  state,  from  a 
state  of  the  horse  and  road  scale,  like  France,  let 
us  say,  or  Germany.  And  equally  it  is  with  the 
United  States  a  new  growth.  The  present  British 
Empire  is  indeed  a  newer  growth  than  the  United 
States.  But  while  the  United  States  constitute  a 
homogeneous  system  and  grow  more  homogeneous, 
the  British  Empire  is  heterogeneous  and  shows  lit- 
tle or  no  assimilative  power.  And  while  the 
United  States  are  all  gathered  together  and  are 
still  very  remote  from  any  serious  antagonist,  the 
British  Empire  is  scattered  all  over  the  world,  en- 
tangled with  and  stressed  against  a  multitude  of 
possible  antagonists. 

I  have  been  arguing  that  the  size  and  manage- 
ability of  all  political  states  is  finally  a  matter  of 
transport  and  communications.  They  grow  to  a 
limit  strictly  determined  by  these  considerations. 
Beyond  that  limit  they  are  unstable.  Let  us  now 
apply  these  ideas  to  the  British  Empire. 

I  have  shown  that  the  great  system  of  the 
United  States  is  the  creation  of  the  river  steam- 
boat and  the  railway.    Quite  as  much  so  is  the 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        67 

present  British  Empire  the  creation  of  the  ocean- 
going steamship — protected  by  a  great  navy. 

The  British  Empire  is  a  modern  ocean  state  just 
as  the  United  States  is  a  modern  continental  state. 
The  political  and  economic  cohesion  of  the  British 
Empire  rests  upon  this  one  thing,  upon  the  steam- 
ship remaining  the  dominant  and  secure  means  of 
world  transport  in  the  future.  If  the  British  Em- 
pire is  to  remain  sovereign  and  secure  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  approval  and  co-operation  of  other 
states,  it  is  necessary  that  steamship  transport 
(ocean  transport)  should  remain  dominant  in 
peace  and  invulnerable  in  war. 

Well,  that  brings  us  face  to  face  with  two  com- 
paratively new  facts  that  throw  a  shadow  upon 
both  that  predominance  and  upon  that  invulnera- 
bility. One  is  air  transport ;  the  other  the  subma- 
rine. The  possibilities  of  the  ocean-going  subma- 
rine I  will  not  enlarge  upon  now.  They  will  be 
familiar  to  everyone  who  followed  the  later  phases 
of  the  great  war. 

It  must  be  clear  that  sea  power  is  no  longer  the 
simple  and  decisive  thing  it  was  before  the  com- 
ing of  the  submarine.  The  sea  ways  can  no  longer 
be  taken  and  possessed  completely.  To  no  other 
power,  except  Japan,  is  this  so  grave  a  considera- 
tion as  it  is  to  Britain. 

And  if  we  turn  to  the  possibilities  of  air-trans- 
port in  the  future  we  are  forced  towards  the  same 
conclusion,  that  the  security  of  the  British  Empire 
must  rest  in  the  future  not  on  its  strength  in 


68        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

warfare,  but  on  its  keeping  the  peace  within  and 
without  its  boundaries. 

I  was  a  member  of  the  British  Civil  Air  Trans- 
port Committee,  and  we  went  with  care  and  thor- 
oughness into  the  possibilities  and  probabilities 
of  the  air.  My  work  on  that  committee  convinced 
me  that  in  the  near  future  the  air  may  be  the  chief 
if  not  the  only  highway  for  long-distance  mails, 
for  long-distance  passenger  traffic,  and  for  the 
carriage  of  most  valuable  and  compact  commodi- 
ties. The  ocean  ways  are  likely  to  be  only  the 
ways  for  slow  travel  and  for  staple  and  bulky 
trade. 

And  my  studies  on  that  committee  did  much  to 
confirm  my  opinion  that  in  quite  a  brief  time  the 
chief  line  of  military  attack  will  be  neither  by  sea 
nor  land  but  through  the  air.  Moreover,  it  was 
borne  in  upon  me  that  the  chief  air  routes  of  the 
world  will  lie  over  the  great  plains  of  the  world, 
that  they  will  cross  wide  stretches  of  sea  or  moun- 
tainous country  only  very  reluctantly. 

Now  think  of  how  the  British  Empire  lies  with 
relation  to  the  great  sea  and  land  masses  of  the 
world.  There  has  been  talk  in  Great  Britain  of 
what  people  have  called  " all-red  air  routes,' '  that 
is  to  say,  all-British  air  routes.  There  are  no  all- 
red  air  routes.  You  cannot  get  out  of  Britain  to 
any  other  parts  of  the  Empire,  unless  perhaps  it  is 
Canada,  without  crossing  foreign  territory.  That 
is  a  fact  that  British  people  have  to  face  and  di- 
gest, and  the  sooner  they  grasp  it  the  better  for 
them.    Britain  cannot  use  air  ways  even  to  develop 


THE  PROJECT  OF  A  WORLD  STATE        69 

her  commerce  in  peace  time  without  the  consent 
and  co-operation  of  a  large  number  of  her  inter- 
vening neighbours.  If  she  embarks  single-handed 
on  any  considerable  war  she  will  find  both  her  air 
and  her  sea  communications  almost  completely  cut. 
And  so  the  British  Empire,  in  spite  of  its  size 
and  its  modernity,  is  not  much  better  off  now  in  the 
way  of  standing  alone  than  the  other  European 
countries.  It  is  no  exception  to  our  generalization 
that  (apart  from  all  other  questions)  the  scale  and 
form  of  the  European  states  are  out  of  harmony 
with  contemporary  and  developing  transport  con- 
ditions, and  that  all  these  powers  are,  if  only  on 
this  account,  under  one  urgent  necessity  to  sink 
those  ideas  of  complete  independence  that  have 
hitherto  dominated  them.  It  is  a  life  and  death 
necessity.  If  they  cannot  obey  it  they  will  all  be 
destroyed. 


in 

THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATEIOTISM  TO  A  WORLD  STATE 

In  my  opening  argument  I  have  shown  the  con- 
nection between  the  present  intense  political  trou- 
bles of  the  world  and  more  particularly  of  Europe, 
and  the  advance  in  mechanical  knowledge  during 
the  past  hundred  and  fifty  years.  I  have  shown 
that  without  a  very  drastic  readjustment  of  politi- 
cal ideas  and  habits,  there  opens  before  Europe 
and  the  world  generally,  a  sure  prospect  of  degen- 
erative conflicts ;  that  without  such  a  readjustment, 
our  civilization  has  passed  its  zenith  and  must 
continue  the  process  of  collapse  that  has  been  in 
progress  since  August,  1914. 

Now  this  readjustment  means  an  immediate  con- 
flict with  existing  patriotism.  We  have  embarked 
here  upon  a  discussion  in  which  emotion  and  pas- 
sion seem  quite  unavoidable,  the  discussion  of 
nationality.  ^  At  the  very  outset  we  bump  violently 
against  patriotism  as  any  European  understands 
that  word.  And  it  is,  I  hold,  impossible  not  to 
bump  against  European  patriotisms.  We  cannot 
temporize  with  patriotism,  as  one  finds  it  in  Eu- 
rope, and  get  on  towards  a  common  human  wel- 
fare. The  two  things  are  flatly  opposed.  One  or  the 
other  must  be  sacrificed.    The  political  and  social 

70 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      71 

muddle  of  Europe  at  the  present  time  is  yer£ 
largely  due  to  the  attempt  to  compromise  between 
patriotism  and  the  common  good  of  Europe. 

Do  we  want  to  get  rid  of  patriotism  altogether? 

I  do  not  think  we  want  to  get  rid  of  patriotism, 
and  I  do  not  think  we  could,  even  if  we  wanted  to 
do  so.  It  seems  to  be  necessary  to  his  moral  life, 
that  a  man  should  feel  himself  part  of  a  commu- 
nity, belonging  to  it,  and  it  belonging  to  him.  And 
that  this  community  should  be  a  single  and  lovable 
reality,  inspired  by  a  common  idea,  with  a  common 
fashion  and  aim. 

But  a  point  I  have  been  trying  to  bring  out 
throughout  all  this  argument  so  far  is  this — that 
when  a  European  goes  to  the  United  States  of 
America  he  finds  a  new  sort  of  state,  materially 
bigger  and  materially  less  encumbered  than  any 
European  state.  And  he  also  finds  an  intensely 
patriotic  people  whose  patriotism  isn't  really  the 
equivalent  of  a  European  patriotism.  It  is  his- 
torically and  practically  a  synthesis  of  European 
patriotisms.  It  is  numerically  bigger.  It  is  geo- 
graphically ten  times  as  big.  That  is  very  impor- 
tant indeed  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  discus- 
sion. And  it  is  synthetic;  it  is  a  thing  made  out 
of  something  smaller.  People,  I  believe,  talk  of 
100  per  cent.  Americans.  There  is  no  100  per  cent. 
American  except  the  Red  Indian.  There  isn't  a 
white  man  in  the  United  States  from  whose  blood 
a  large  factor  of  European  patriotism  hasn  't  been 
washed  out  to  make  way  for  his  American  patri- 
otism. 


72        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

Upon  this  fact  of  American  patriotism,  as  a 
larger  different  thing  than  European  patriotism,  I 
build.  The  thing  can  be  done.  If  it  can  be  done 
in  the  Europeans  and  their  descendants  who  have 
come  to  America,  it  can  conceivably  be  done  in  the 
Europeans  who  abide  in  Europe.  And  how  can 
we  set  about  doing  it? 

America,  the  silent,  comprehensive  continent  of 
America,  did  the  thing  by  taking  all  the  various 
nationalities  who  have  made  up  her  population  and 
obliging  them  to  live  together. 

Unhappily  we  cannot  take  the  rest  of  our  Euro- 
pean nations  now  and  put  them  on  to  a  great  virgin 
continent  to  learn  a  wider  political  wisdom.  There 
are  no  more  virgin  continents.  Europe  must  stay 
where  she  is.  .  .  . 

Now  I  am  told  it  sometimes  helps  scientific  men 
to  clear  up  their  ideas  about  a  process  by  imagin- 
ing that  process  reversed  and  so  getting  a  viewof 
it  from  a  different  direction.  Let  us  then,  for  a 
few  moments,  instead  of  talking  of  the  expansion 
and  synthesis  of  patriotism  in  Europe,  imagine  a 
development  of  narrow  patriotism  in  America  and 
consider  how  that  case  could  be  dealt  with. 

Suppose,  for  instance,  there  was  a  serious  out- 
break of  local  patriotism  in  Kentucky.  Suppose 
you  found  the  people  of  Kentucky  starting  a  flag 
of  their  own  and  objecting  to  what  they  would 
probably  call  the  "  vague  internationalism"  of  the 
stars  and  stripes.  Suppose  you  found  them  want- 
ing to  set  up  tariff  barriers  to  the  trade  of  the 
states  round  about  them.    Suppose  you  found  they 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      73 

were  preparing  to  annex  considerable  parts  of  the 
State  of  Virginia  by  force,  in  order  to  secure  a 
proper  strategic  frontier  among  the  mountains  to 
the  east,  and  that  they  were  also  talking  darkly  of 
their  need  for  an  outlet  to  the  sea  of  their  very 
own. 

What  would  an  American  citizen  think  of  such 
an  outbreak?  He  would  probably  think  that  Ken- 
tucky had  gone  mad.  But  this,  which  seems  such 
fantastic  behaviour  when  we  imagine  it  occurring 
in  Kentucky,  is  exactly  what  is  happening  in  Eu- 
rope in  the  case  of  little  states  that  are  hardly 
any  larger  than  Kentucky.  They  have  always 
been  so.  They  have  not  gone  mad;  if  this  sort 
of  thing  is  madness  then  they  were  born  mad. 
And  they  have  never  been  cured.  A  state  of  af- 
fairs that  is  regarded  in  Europe  as  normal  would 
be  regarded  in  the  United  States  as  a  grave  case 
of  local  mental  trouble. 

And  what  would  the  American  community  prob- 
ably do  in  such  a  case?  It  would  probably  begin 
by  inquiring  where  Kentucky  had  got  these 
strange  ideas.  They  would  look  for  sources  of 
infection.  Somebody  must  have  been  preaching 
there  or  writing  in  the  newspapers  or  teaching 
mischief  in  the  school.  And  I  suppose  the  people 
of  the  United  States  would  set  themselves  very 
earnestly  to  see  that  sounder  sense  was  talked  and 
taught  to  the  people  of  Kentucky  about  these 
things. 

Now  that  is  precisely  what  has  to  be  done  in 
the  parallel  European  case.    Everywhere  in  Eu- 


74        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

rope  there  goes  on  in  the  national  schools,  in  the 
patriotic  churches,  in  the  national  presses,  in  the 
highly  nationalized  literatures,  a  unity-destroying 
propaganda  of  patriotism.  The  schools  of  all  the 
European  countries  at  the  present  time  with 
scarcely  an  exception,  teach  the  most  rancid  patri- 
otism ;  they  are  centres  of  an  abominable  political 
infection.  The  children  of  Europe  grow  up  with 
an  intensity  of  national  egotism  that  makes  them, 
for  all  practical  international  purposes,  insane. 
They  are  not  born  with  it,  but  they  are  infected 
with  it  as  soon  as  they  can  read  and  write.  The 
British  learn  nothing  but  the  glories  of  Britain 
and  the  British  Empire;  the  French  are,  if  pos- 
sible, still  more  insanely  concentrated  on  France ;, 
the  Germans  are  just  recovering  from  the  bitter 
consequences  of  forty  years  of  intensive  national- 
ist education.  And  so  on.  Every  country  in 
Europe  is  its  own  Sinn  Fein,  cultivating  that  ugly 
and  silly  obsession  of  "ourselves  alone.' '  " Our- 
selves alone' '  is  the  sure  guide  to  conflict  and  dis- 
aster, to  want,  misery,  violence,  degradation  and 
death  for  our  children  and  our  children's  children 
— until  our  race  is  dead. 

The  first  task  before  us  in  Europe  is,  at  any 
cost,  to  release  our  children  from  this  nationalist 
obsession,  to  teach  the  mass  of  European  people 
a  little  truthful  history  in  which  each  one  will  see 
the  past  and  future  of  his  own  country  in  their 
proper  proportions,  and  a  little  truthful  ethnology 
in  which  each  country  will  get  over  the  delusion 
that  its  people  are  a  distinct  and  individual  race. 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      75 

The  history  teaching  in  the  schools  of  Europe  is 
at  the  very  core  of  this  business. 

But  that  is  only,  so  to  speak,  the  point  of  appli- 
cation of  great  complex  influences,  the  influences 
that  mould  us  in  childhood,  the  teachings  of  litera- 
ture, of  the  various  religious  bodies,  and  the  daily 
reiteration  of  the  press.  Before  Europe  can  get 
on,  there  has  to  be  a  colossal  turnover  of  these 
moral  and  intellectual  forces  in  the  direction  of 
creating  an  international  mind.  If  that  can  be 
effected  then  there  is  hope  for  Europe  and  the  Old 
World.  If  it  cannot  be  effected,  then  certainly 
Europe  will  go  down — with  its  flags  nailed  to  its 
masts.  We  are  on  a  sinking  ship  that  only  one 
thing  can  save.  We  have  to  oust  these  European 
patriotisms  by  some  greater  idea  or  perish. 

What  is  this  greater  idea  to  be? 

Now  I  submit  that  this  greater  idea  had  best  be 
the  idea  of  the  World  State  of  All  Mankind. 

I  will  admit  that  so  far  I  have  made  a  case  only 
for  teaching  the  idea  of  a  United  States  of  Europe 
in  Europe.  I  have  concentrated  our  attention 
upon  that  region  of  maximum  congestion  and  con- 
flict. But  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  no  real  and 
effective  barriers  and  boundaries  in  the  Old 
World  between  Europe  and  Asia  and  Africa.  The 
ordinary  Russian  talks  of  " Europe' '  as  one  who 
is  outside  it.  The  European  political  systems 
flow  over  and  have  always  overflowed  into  the 
greater  areas  to  the  east  and  south.  Remember 
the  early  empires  of  Macedonia  and  Rome.  See 
how  the  Russian  language  runs  to  the  Pacific,  and 


76        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

how  Islam  radiates  into  all  three  continents.  I 
will  not  elaborate  this  case. 

When  you  bear  such  things  in  mind,  I  think 
you  will  agree  with  me  that  if  we  are  to  talk  of 
a  United  States  of  Europe,  it  is  just  as  easy  and 
practicable  to  talk  of  a  United  States  of  the  Old 
World.  And  are  we  to  stop  at  a  United  States 
of  the  Old  World? 

No  doubt  the  most  evident  synthetic  forces  in 
America  at  the  present  time  point  towards  some 
sort  of  pan- American  unification.  That  is  the 
nearest  thing.    That  may  come  first. 

But  are  we  to  contemplate  a  sort  of  dual  world 
—the  New  World  against  the  Old? 

I  do  not  think  that  would  be  any  very  perma- 
nent or  satisfactory  stopping-place.  Why  make 
two  bites  at  a  planet?  If  we  work  for  unity  on 
the  large  scale  we  are  contemplating,  we  may  as 
well  work  for  world  unity. 

Not  only  in  distance  but  in  a  score  of  other 
matters  are  London  and  Eome  nearer  to  New 
York  than  is  Patagonia,  and  San  Francisco  is 
always  likely  to  be  more  interesting  to  Japan  than 
Paris  or  Madrid.  I  cannot  see  any  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  mechanical  drawing  together 
of  the  peoples  of  the  world  into  one  economic 
and  political  unity  is  likely  to  cease — unless  our 
civilization  ceases.  I  see  no  signs  that  our  present 
facilities  for  transport  and  communication  are  the 
ultimate  possible  facilities.  Once  we  break  away 
from  current  nationalist  limitations  in  our  politi- 
cal ideas,  then  there  is  no  reason  and  no  advantage 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      77 

in  contemplating  any  halfway  house  to  a  complete 
human  unity. 

Now  after  what  I  have  been  saying  it  is  very 
easy  to  explain  why  I  would  have  this  idea  of 
human  unity  put  before  people's  minds  in  the  form 
of  a  World  State  and  not  of  a  League  of  Nations. 

Let  me  first  admit  the  extraordinary  educa- 
tional value  of  the  League  of  Nations  propaganda, 
and  of  the  attempt  that  has  been  made  to  create 
a  League  of  Nations.  It  has  brought  before  the 
general  intelligence  of  the  world  the  proposition 
of  a  world  law  and  a  world  unity  that  could  not 
perhaps  have  been  broached  in  any  other  way. 

But  is  it  a  league  of  nations  that  is  wanted? 

I  submit  to  you  that  the  word  " nations' '  is 
just  the  word  that  should  have  been  avoided — that 
it  admits  and  tends  to  stereotype  just  those  con- 
ceptions of  division  and  difference  that  we  must 
at  any  cost  minimize  and  obliterate  if  our  species 
is  to  continue.  And  the  phrase  has  a  thin  and 
legal  and  litigious  flavour.  What  loyalty  and  what 
devotion  can  we  expect  this  multiple  association  to 
command!  It  has  no  unity — no  personality.  It 
is  like  asking  a  man  to  love  the  average  member 
of  a  woman's  club  instead  of  loving  his  wife. 

For  the  idea  of  Man,  for  human  unity,  for  our 
common  blood,  for  the  one  order  of  the  world,  I 
can  imagine  men  living  and  dying,  but  not  for  a 
miscellaneous  assembly  that  will  not  mix — even 
in  its  name.  It  has  no  central  idea,  no  heart  to 
it,  this  League  of  Nations  formula.  It  is  weak 
and  compromising  just  where  it  should  be  strong 


78        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

—in  defining  its  antagonism  to  separate  national 
sovereignty.  For  that  is  what  it  aims  at,  if  it- 
means  business.  If  it  means  business  it  means  at 
least  a  super-state  overriding  the  autonomy  of 
existing  states,  and  if  it  does  not  mean  business 
then  we  have  no  use  for  it  whatever. 

It  may  seem  a  much  greater  undertaking  to 
attack  nationality  and  nationalism  instead  of 
patching  up  a  compromise  with  these  things,  but 
along  the  line  of  independent  nationality  lies  no 
hope  of  unity  and  peace  and  continuing  progress 
for  mankind.  We  cannot  suffer  these  old  concen- 
trations of  loyalty  because  we  want  that  very 
loyalty  which  now  concentrates  upon  them  to 
cement  and  sustain  the  peace  of  all  the  world. 
Just  as  in  the  past  provincial  patriotisms  have 
given  place  to  national  patriotisms,  so  now  we 
need  to  oust  these  still  too  narrow  devotions  by  a 
new  unity  and  a  new  reigning  idea,  the  idea  of 
one  state  and  one  flag  in  all  the  earth. 

The  idea  of  the  World  States  stands  to  the  idea 
of  the  League  of  Nations  much  as  the  idea  of  the 
one  God  of  Earth  and  Heaven  stands  to  a  Divine 
Committee  composed  of  Wodin  and  Baal  and 
Jupiter  and  Amnon  Ea  and  Mumbo  Jumbo  and 
all  the  other  national  and  tribal  gods.  There  is 
no  compromise  possible  in  the  one  matter  as  in 
the  other.  There  is  no  way  round.  The  task  be- 
fore mankind  is  to  substitute  the  one  common  idea 
of  an  overriding  world  commonweal  for  the  multi- 
tudinous ideas  of  little  commonweals  that  prevail 
everywhere  to-day.    We  have  already  glanced  at 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM       79 

the  near  and  current  consequences  of  our  failure 
to  bring  about  that  substitution. 

Now  this  is  an  immense  proposal.  Is  it  a 
preposterous  one?  Let  us  not  shirk  the  tremen- 
dous scale  upon  which  the  foundations  of  a  world- 
state  of  all  mankind  must  be  laid.  But  remember 
however  great  that  task  before  us  may  seem,  how- 
ever near  it  may  come  to  the  impossible,  never- 
theless, in  the  establishment  of  one  world  rule  and 
one  world  law  lies  the  only  hope  of  escape  from 
an  increasing  tangle  of  wars,  from  social  over- 
strain, and  at  last  a  social  dissolution  so  complete 
as  to  end  for  ever  the  tale  of  mankind  as  we  under- 
stand mankind. 

Personally  I  am  appalled  by  the  destruction 
already  done  in  the  world  in  the  past  seven  years. 
I  doubt  if  any  untravelled  American  can  realize 
how  much  of  Europe  is  already  broken  up.  I  do 
not  think  many  people  realize  how  swiftly  Europe 
is  still  sinking,  how  urgent  it  is  to  get  European 
affairs  put  back  upon  a  basis  of  the  common  good 
if  civilization  is  to  be  saved. 

And  now,  as  to  the  immensity  of  this  project 
of  substituting  loyalty  to  a  world  commonweal  for 
loyalty  to  a  single  egotistical  belligerent  nation. 
It  is  a  project  to  invade  hundreds  of  millions  of 
minds,  to  attack  certain  ideas  established  in  those 
minds  and  either  to  efface  those  ideas  altogether 
or  to  supplement  and  correct  them  profoundly  by 
this  new  idea  of  a  human  commonweal.  We  have 
to  get  not  only  into  the  at  present  intensely 
patriotic  minds  of  Frenchmen,  Germans,  English, 


80         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

Irish  and  Japanese,  but  into  the  remote  and 
difficult  minds  of  Arabs  and  Indians  and  into  the 
minds  of  the  countless  millions  of  China.  Is  there 
any  precedent  to  justify  us  in  hoping  that  such  a 
change  in  world  ideas  is  possible? 

I  think  there  is.  I  would  suggest  that  the 
general  tendency  of  thought  about  these  things 
to-day  is  altogether  too  sceptical  of  what  teaching 
and  propaganda  can  do  in  these  matters.  In  the 
past  there  have  been  very  great  changes  in  human 
thought.  I  need  scarcely  remind  you  of  the  spread 
of  Christianity  in  Western  Europe.  In  a  few 
centuries  the  whole  of  Western  Europe  was 
changed  from  the  wild  confusion  of  warring  tribes 
that  succeeded  the  breakdown  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  into  the  unity  of  Christendom,  into  a 
community  with  such  an  idea  of  unity  that  it  could 
be  roused  from  end  to  end  by  the  common  idea 
of  the  Crusades. 

Still  more  remarkable  was  the  swift  trans- 
formation in  less  than  a  century  of  all  the  nations 
and  peoples  to  the  south  and  west  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, from  Spain  to  Central  Asia,  into  the 
unity  of  Islam,  a  unity  which  has  lasted  to  this 
day.  In  both  these  cases,  what  I  may  call  the 
mental  turnover  was  immense. 

I  think  if  you  will  consider  the  spread  of  these 
very  complex  and  difficult  religions,  and  compare 
the  means  at  the  disposal  of  their  promoters  with 
the  means  at  the  disposal  of  intelligent  people 
to-day,  you  will  find  many  reasons  for  believing 
that  a  recasting  of  people's  ideas  into  the  frame- 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      81 

work  of  a  universal  state  is  by  no  means  an 
impossible  project. 

Those  great  teachings  of  the  past  were  spread 
largely  by  word  of  mouth.  Their  teachers  had 
to  travel  slowly  and  dangerously.  People  were 
gathered  together  to  hear  with  great  difficulty,  ex- 
cept in  a  few  crowded  towns.  Books  could  be  used 
only  sparingly.  Few  people  could  read,  fewer  still 
could  translate,  and  MSS.  were  copied  with 
extreme  slowness  upon  parchment.  There  was 
no  printing,  no  paper,  no  post.  And  except  for  a 
very  few  people  there  were  no  schools.  Both 
Christendom  and  Islam  had  to  create  their  com- 
mon schools  in  order  to  preserve  even  a  minimum 
of  their  doctrine  intact  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. All  this  was  done  in  the  teeth  of  much  bitter 
opposition  and  persecution. 

Now  to-day  we  have  means  of  putting  ideas  and 
arguments  swiftly  and  effectively  before  people  all 
over  the  world  at  the  same  time,  such  as  no  one 
could  have  dreamt  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  We 
have  not  only  books  and  papers,  but  in  the  cinema 
we  have  a  means  of  rapid,  vivid  presentation  still 
hardly  used.  We  have  schools  nearly  everywhere. 
And  here  in  the  need  for  an  overruling  world  state, 
and  the  idea  of  world  service  replacing  combative 
patriotism,  we  have  an  urgent,  a  commanding 
human  need.  We  have  an  invincible  case  for  this 
world  state  and  an  unanswerable  objection  to  the 
nationalisms  and  patriotisms  that  would  oppose 
it. 

Is  it  not  almost  inevitable  that  some  of  us  should 


82         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

get  together  and  begin  a  propaganda  upon  modern 
lines  of  this  organized  world  peace,  without  which 
our  race  must  perish?  The  world  perishes  for  the 
want  of  a  common  political  idea.  It  is  still  quite 
possible  to  give  the  world  this  common  political 
idea,  the  idea  of  a  federal  world  state.  We  can- 
not help  but  set  about  doing  it. 

So  I  put  it  to  you  that  the  most  important 
work  before  men  and  women  to-day  is  the  preach- 
ing and  teaching,  the  elaboration  and  then  at  last 
the  realization  of  this  Project  of  the  World  State. 
We  have  to  create  a  vision  of  it,  to  make  it  seem 
first  a  possibility  and  then  an  approaching  reality. 
This  is  a  task  that  demands  the  work  and  thought 
of  thousands  of  minds.  We  have  to  spread  the 
idea  of  a  Federal  World  State,  as  an  approaching 
reality,  throughout  the  world.  We  can  do  this 
nowadays  through  a  hundred  various  channels. 
We  can  do  it  through  the  press,  through  all  sorts 
of  literary  expression,  in  our  schools,  colleges,  and 
universities,  through  political  mouthpieces,  by 
special  organizations,  and  last,  but  not  least, 
through  the  teaching  of  the  churches.  For  remem- 
ber that  all  the  great  religions  of  the  world  are  in 
theory  universalist ;  they  may  tolerate  the  divi- 
sions of  men  but  they  cannot  sanction  them.  We 
propose  no  religious  revolution,  but  at  most  a 
religious  revival.  We  can  spread  ideas  and  sug- 
gestions now  with  a  hundred  times  the  utmost 
rapidity  of  a  century  ago. 

This  movement  need  not  at  once  intervene  in 
politics.    It  is  a  prospective  movement,  and  its 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      83 

special  concern  will  be  with  young  and  still  grow- 
ing minds.  But  as  it  spreads  it  will  inevitably 
change  politics.  The  nations,  states,  and  king- 
doms of  to-day,  which  fight  and  scheme  against 
each  other  as  though  they  had  to  go  on  fighting 
and  scheming  for  ever,  will  become  more  and  more 
openly  and  manifestly  merely  guardian  govern- 
ments, governments  playing  a  waiting  part  in  the 
world,  while  the  world  state  comes  of  age.  For 
this  World  State,  for  which  the  world  is  waiting, 
must  necessarily  be  a  fusion  of  all  governments, 
and  heir  to  all  the  empires. 

So  far  I  have  been  occupied  by  establishing  a 
case  for  the  World  State.  It  has  been,  I  fear, 
rather  an  abstract  discussion.  I  have  kept  closely 
to  the  bare  hard  logic  of  the  present  human  sit- 
uation. 

But  now  let  me  attempt  very  briefly,  in  the 
barest  outline,  some  concrete  realization  of  what 
a  World  State  would  mean.  Let  us  try  and  con- 
ceive for  ourselves  the  form  a  World  State  would 
take.  I  do  not  care  to  leave  this  discussion  with 
nothing  to  it  but  a  phrase  which  is  really  hardly 
more  than  a  negative  phrase  until  we  put  some 
body  to  it.  As  it  stands  World  State  means  simply 
a  politically  undivided  world.  Let  us  try  and 
carry  that  over  to  the  idea  of  a  unified  organized 
state  throughout  the  world. 

Let  us  try  to  imagine  what  a  World  Govern- 
ment would  be  like.  I  find  that  when  one  speaks 
of  a  World  State  people  think  at  once  of  some 
existing  government  and  magnify  it  to  world  pro' 


84        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

portions.  They  ask,  for  example,  where  will  the 
World  Congress  meet ;  and  how  will  you  elect  your 
World  President?  Won't  your  World  President, 
they  say,  be  rather  a  tremendous  personage?  How 
are  we  to  choose  him?  Or  will  there  be  a  World 
King?  These  are  very  natural  questions,  at  the 
first  onset.  But  are  they  sound  questions? 
May  they  not  be  a  little  affected  by  false  anal- 
ogies? The  governing  of  the  whole  of  the  world 
may  turn  out  to  be  not  sl  magnified  version  of 
governing  a  part  of  the  world,  but  a  different  sort 
of  job  altogether.  These  analogies  that  people 
draw  so  readily  from  national  states  may  not 
really  work  in  a  World  State. 

And  first  with  regard  to  this  question  of  a 
king  or  president.  Let  us  ask  whether  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  World  State  will  have  any  single 
personal  head  at  all? 

Is  the  World  State  likely  to  be  a  monarchy — 
either  an  elective  short  term  limited  monarchy 
such  as  is  the  United  States,  or  an  inherited 
limited  monarchy  like  the  British  Empire? 

Many  people  will  say,  you  must  have  a  head  of 
the  state.  But  must  you?  Is  not  this  idea  a 
legacy  from  the  days  when  states  were  small  com- 
munities needing  a  leader  in  war  and  diplomacy? 

In  the  World  State  we  must  remember  there 
will  be  no  war — and  no  diplomacy  as  such. 

I  would  even  question  whether  in  such  a  great 
modern  state  as  the  U.S.A.  the  idea  and  the 
functions  of  the  president  may  not  be  made  too 
important.     Indeed  I  believe  that  question  has 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM,      85 

been  asked  by  many  people  in  the  States  lately, 
and  has  been  answered  in  the  affirmative. 

The  broad  lines  of  the  United  States  Constitu- 
tion were  drawn  in  a  period  of  almost  universal 
monarchy.  American  affairs  were  overshadowed 
by  the  personality  of  George  Washington,  and  as 
you  know,  monarchist  ideas  were  so  rife  that  there 
was  a  project,  during  the  years  of  doubt  and 
division  that  followed  the  War  of  Independence, 
for  importing  a  German  King,  a  Prussian  Prince, 
in  imitation  of  the  British  Monarchy.  But  if  the 
United  States  were  beginning  again  to-day  on  its 
present  scale,  would  it  put  so  much  power  and 
importance  upon  a  single  individual  as  it  put 
upon  George  Washington  and  his  successors  in 
the  White  House?    I  doubt  it  very  much. 

There  may  be  a  limit,  I  suggest,  to  the  size  and 
complexity  of  a  community  that  can  be  directed 
by  a  single  personal  head.  Perhaps  that  limit 
may  have  been  passed  by  both  the  United  States 
and  by  the  British  Empire  at  the  present  time. 
It  may  be  possible  for  one  person  to  be  leader 
and  to  have  an  effect  of  directing  personality  in  a 
community  of  millions  or  even  of  tens  of  millions. 
But  is  it  possible  for  one  small  short-lived  in- 
dividual to  get  over  and  affect  and  make  any  sort 
of  contact  with  hundreds  of  millions  in  thousands 
of  towns  and  cities? 

Recently  we  have  watched  with  admiration  and 
sympathy  the  heroic  efforts  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
to  shake  hands  with  and  get  his  smile  well  home 
into  the  hearts  of  the  entire  population  of  the 


86        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

British  Empire  of  which  he  is  destined  to  become 
the  " golden  link."  After  tremendous  exertions 
a  very  large  amount  of  the  ground  still  remains 
to  be  covered. 

I  will  confess  I  cannot  see  any  single  individual 
human  head  in  my  vision  of  the  World  State. 

The  linking  reality  of  the  World  State  is  much 
more  likely  to  be  not  an  individual  but  an  idea — 
such  an  idea  as  that  of  a  human  commonweal 
under  the  God  of  all  mankind. 

If  at  any  time,  for  any  purpose,  some  one  in- 
dividual had  to  step  out  and  act  for  the  World 
State  as  a  whole,  then  I  suppose  the  senior  judges 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  or  the  Speaker  of  the 
Council,  or  the  head  of  the  Associated  Scientific 
Societies,  or  some  such  person,  could  step  out  and 
do  what  had  to  be  done. 

But  if  there  is  to  be  no  single  head  person, 
there  must  be  at  least  some  sort  of  assembly  or 
council.  That  seems  to  be  necessary.  But  will 
it  be  a  gathering  at  all  like  Congress  or  the  British 
Parliament,  with  a  Government  side  and  an 
opposition  ruled  by  party  traditions  and  party 
ideas? 

There  again,  I  think  we  may  be  too  easily 
misled  by  existing  but  temporary  conditions.  I 
do  not  think  it  is  necessary  to  assume  that  the 
council  of  the  World  State  will  be  an  assembly  of 
party  politicians.  I  believe  it  will  be  possible  to 
have  it  a  real  gathering  of  representatives,  a  fair 
sample  of  the  thought  and  will  of  mankind  at 
large,  and  to  avoid  a  party  development  by  a  more 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM,      87 

scientific  method  of  voting  than  the  barbaric 
devices  used  for  electing  representatives  to  Con- 
gress or  the  British  Parliament,  devices  that  play 
directly  into  the  hands  of  the  party  organizer  who 
trades  upon  the  defects  of  political  method. 

Will  this  council  be  directly  elected?  That,  I 
think,  may  be  found  to  be  essential.  And  upon 
a  very  broad  franchise.  Because,  firstly,  it  is 
before  all  things  important  that  every  adult  in  the 
world  should  feel  a  direct  and  personal  contact 
between  himself  and  the  World  State,  and  that  he 
is  an  assenting  and  participating  citizen  of  the 
world;  and  secondly,  because  if  your  Council  is 
appointed  by  any  intermediate  body,  all  sorts  of 
local  and  national  considerations,  essential  in  the 
business  of  the  subordinate  body,  will  get  in  the 
way  of  a  simple  and  direct  regard  for  the  world 
commonweal. 

And  as  to  this  council:  Will  it  have  great 
debates  and  wonderful  scenes  and  crises  and  so 
forth — the  sort  of  thing  that  looks  well  in  a  large 
historical  painting?  There  again  we  may  be  easily 
misled  by  analogy.  One  consideration  that  bars 
the  way  to  anything  of  that  sort  is  that  its  mem- 
bers will  have  no  common  language  which  they 
will  be  all  able  to  speak  with  the  facility  necessary 
for  eloquence.  Eloquence  is  far  more  adapted  to 
the  conditions  of  a  Red  Indian  pow-wow  than  to 
the  ordering  of  large  and  complicated  affairs. 
The  World  Council  may  be  a  very  taciturn  assem- 
bly. It  may  even  meet  infrequently.  Its  members 
may  communicate  their  views  largely  by  notes 


88        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

which  may  have  to  be  very  clear  and  explicit, 
because  they  will  have  to  stand  translation,  and 
short — to  escape  neglect. 

And  what  will  be  the  chief  organs  and  organiza- 
tions and  works  and  methods  with  which  this 
Council  of  the  World  State  will  be  concerned? 

There  will  be  a  Supreme  Court  determining 
not  International  Law,  but  World  Law.  There 
will  be  a  growing  Code  of  World  Law. 

There  will  be  a  world  currency. 

There  will  be  a  ministry  of  posts,  transport  and 
communications  generally. 

There  will  be  a  ministry  of  trade  in  staple  pro- 
ducts and  for  the  conservation  and  development 
of  the  natural  resources  of  the  earth. 

There  will  be  a  ministry  of  social  and  labour 
conditions. 

There  will  be  a  ministry  of  world  health. 

There  will  be  a  ministry,  the  most  important 
ministry  of  all,  watching  and  supplementing 
national  educational  work  and  taking  up  the  care 
and  stimulation  of  backward  communities. 

And  instead  of  a  War  Office  and  Naval  and 
Military  departments,  there  will  be  a  Peace 
Ministry  studying  the  belligerent  possibilities  of 
every  new  invention,  watching  for  armed  disturb- 
ances everywhere,  and  having  complete  control  of 
every  armed  force  that  remains  in  the  world.  All 
these  world  ministries  will  be  working  in  co- 
operation with  local  authorities  who  will  apply 
world-wide  general  principles  to  local  conditions. 

These  items  probably  comprehend  everything 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      89 

that  the  government  of  a  World  State  would  have 
to  do.  Much  of  its  activity  would  be  merely  the 
co-ordination  and  adjustment  of  activities  already 
very  thoroughly  discussed  and  prepared  for  it  by 
local  and  national  discussions.  I  think  it  will  be 
a  mistake  for  us  to  assume  that  the  work  of  a 
world  government  will  be  vaster  and  more  complex 
than  that  of  such  governments  as  those  of  the 
United  States  or  the  British  Empire.  In  many 
respects  it  will  have  an  enormously  simplified  task. 
There  will  be  no  foreign  enemy,  no  foreign  com- 
petition, no  tariffs,  so  far  as  it  is  concerned,  or 
tariff  wars.  It  will  be  keeping  order;  it  will  not 
be  carrying  on  a  contest.  There  will  be  no  neces- 
sity for  secrecy;  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  have 
a  Cabinet  plotting  and  planning  behind  closed 
doors ;  there  will  be  no  general  policy  except  a 
steady  attention  to  the  common  welfare.  Even 
the  primary  origin  of  a  World  Council  must  neces- 
sarily be  different  from  that  of  any  national  gov- 
ernment. Every  existing  government  owes  its 
beginnings  to  force  and  is  in  its  fundamental 
nature  militant.  It  is  an  offensive-defensive 
organ.  This  fact  saturates  our  legal  and  social 
tradition  more  than  one  realizes  at  first.  There  is, 
about  civil  law  everywhere,  a  faint  flavour  of  a 
relaxed  state  of  siege.  But  a  world  government 
will  arise  out  of  different  motives  and  realize  a 
different  ideal.  It  will  be  primarily  an  organ  for 
keeping  the  peace. 

And  now  perhaps  we  may  look  at  this  project 
of  a  World  State  mirrored  in  the  circumstances  of 


90        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

the  life  of  one  individual  citizen.  Let  us  consider 
very  briefly  the  life  of  an  ordinary  young  man 
living  in  a  World  State  and  consider  how  it  would 
differ  from  a  commonplace  life  to-day. 

He  will  have  been  born  in  some  one  of  the 
United  States  of  the  World — in  New  York  or 
California  or  Ontario  or  New  Zealand  or  Portu- 
gal or  France  or  Bengal  or  Shan-si ;  but  wherever 
his  lot  may  fall,  the  first  history  he  will  learn  will 
be  the  wonderful  history  of  mankind,  from  its 
nearly  animal  beginnings,  a  few  score  thousand 
years  ago,  with  no  tools,  but  implements  of  chipped 
stone  and  hacked  wood,  up  to  the  power  and 
knowledge  of  our  own  time.  His  education  will 
trace  for  him  the  beginnings  of  speech,  of  writing, 
of  cultivation  and  cettlement. 

He  will  learn  of  the  peoples  and  nations  of  the 
past,  and  how  each  one  has  brought  its  peculiar 
gifts  and  its  distinctive  contribution  to  the  accu- 
mulating inheritance  of  our  race. 

He  will  know,  perhaps,  less  of  wars,  battles, 
conquests,  massacres,  kings  and  the  like  unpleas- 
ant invasions  of  human  dignity  and  welfare,  and 
he  will  know  more  of  explorers,  discoverers  and 
stout  outspoken  men  than  our  contemporary  citi- 
zen. 

While  he  is  still  a  little  boy,  he  will  have  the 
great  outlines  of  the  human  adventure  brought 
home  to  his  mind  by  all  sorts  of  vivid  methods  of 
presentation,  such  as  the  poor  poverty-struck 
schools  of  our  own  time  cannot  dream  of 
employing. 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM       91 

And  on  this  broad  foundation  he  will  build  up 
his  knowledge  of  his  own  particular  state  and 
nation  and  people,  learning  not  tales  of  ancient 
grievances  and  triumphs  and  revenges,  but  what 
his  particular  race  and  countryside  have  given 
and  what  it  gives  and  may  be  expected  to  give  to 
the  common  welfare  of  the  world.  On  such  foun- 
dations his  social  consciousness  will  be  built. 

He  will  learn  an  outline  of  all  that  mankind 
knows  and  of  the  fascinating  realms  of  half  knowl- 
edge in  which  man  is  still  struggling  to  know. 
His  curiosity  and  his  imagination  will  be  roused 
and  developed. 

He  will  probably  be  educated  continuously  at 
least  until  he  is  eighteen  or  nineteen,  and  perhaps 
until  he  is  two  or  three  and  twenty.  For  a  world 
that  wastes  none  of  its  resources  upon  armaments 
or  soldiering,  and  which  produces  whatever  it 
wants  in  the  regions  best  adapted  to  that  pro- 
duction, and  delivers  them  to  the  consumer  by 
the  directest  route,  will  be  rich  enough  not  only 
to  spare  the  first  quarter  of  everybody's  life  for 
education  entirely,  but  to  keep  on  with  some  edu- 
cation throughout  the  whole  lifetime. 

Of  course  the  school  to  which  our  young  citizen 
of  the  world  will  go  will  be  very  different  from 
the  rough  and  tumble  schools  of  to-day,  under- 
staffed with  underpaid  assistants,  and  having  bare 
walls.  It  will  have  benefited  by  some  of  the  in- 
telligence and  wealth  we  lavish  to-day  on  range- 
finders  and  submarines. 

Even  a  village  school  will  be  in  a  beautiful  little 


92         THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

building  costing  as  much  perhaps  as  a  big  naval 
gun  or  a  bombing-aeroplane  costs  to-day.  I  know 
this  will  sound  like  shocking  extravagance  to  many 
contemporary  hearers,  but  in  the  World  State  the 
standards  will  be  different. 

I  don't  know  whether  any  of  us  really  grasp 
what  we  are  saying  when  we  talk  of  greater  educa- 
tional efficiency  in  the  future.  That  means — if  it 
means  anything — teaching  more  with  much  less 
trouble.  It  will  mean,  for  instance,  that  most 
people  will  have  three  or  four  languages  properly 
learnt;  that  they  will  think  about  things  mathe- 
matical with  a  quickness  and  clearness  that  puz- 
zles us ;  that  about  all  sorts  of  things  their  minds 
will  move  in  daylight  where  ours  move  in  a  haze 
of  ignorance  or  in  an  emotional  fog. 

This  clear-headed,  broad-thinking  young  citizen 
of  the  World  State  will  not  be  given  up  after  his 
educational  years  to  a  life  of  toil — there  will  be 
very  little  toil  left  in  the  world.  Mankind  will  have 
machines  and  power  enough  to  do  most  of  the  toil 
for  it.  Why,  between  1914  and  1918  we  blew  away 
enough  energy  and  destroyed  enough  machinery 
and  turned  enough  good  grey  matter  into  stinking 
filth  to  release  hundreds  of  millions  of  toilers  from 
toil  for  ever! 

Our  young  citizen  will  choose  some  sort  of 
interesting  work — perhaps  creative  work.  And 
he  will  be  free  to  travel  about  the  whole  world 
without  a  passport  or  visa,  without  a  change  of 
money;  everywhere  will  be  his  country;  he  will 
find  people  everywhere  who  will  be  endlessly  dif- 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM       93 

ferent,  but  none  suspicious  or  hostile.  Every- 
where he  will  find  beautiful  and  distinctive  cities, 
freely  expressive  of  the  spirit  of  the  land  in 
which  they  have  arisen.  Strange  and  yet  friendly 
cities. 

The  world  will  be  a  far  healthier  place  than  it 
is  now — for  mankind  as  a  whole  will  still  carry  on 
organized  wars — no  longer  wars  of  men  against 
men,  but  of  men  against  malarias  and  diseases  and 
infections.  Probably  he  will  never  know  what  a 
cold  is,  or  a  headache.  He  will  be  able  to  go 
through  the  great  forests  of  the  tropics  without 
shivering  with  fever  and  without  saturating  him- 
self with  preventive  drugs.  He  will  go  freely 
among  great  mountains ;  he  will  fly  to  the  Poles  of 
the  earth  if  he  chooses,  and  dive  into  the  cold, 
now  hidden,  deep  places  of  the  sea. 

But  it  is  very  difficult  to  fill  in  the  picture  of 
his  adult  life  so  that  it  will  seem  real  to  our  ex- 
perience. It  is  hard  to  conceive  and  still  more 
difficult  to  convey.  We  live  in  this  congested, 
bickering,  elbowing,  shoving  world,  and  it  has 
soaked  into  our  natures  and  made  us  a  part  of 
itself.  Hardly  any  of  us  know  what  it  is  to  be 
properly  educated,  and  hardly  any  what  it  is  to  be 
in  constant  general  good  health. 

To  talk  of  what  the  world  may  be  to  most  of 
us  is  like  talking  of  baths  and  leisure  and  happy 
things  to  some  poor  hopeless,  gin-soaked  drudge  in 
a  slum.  The  creature  is  so  devitalized ;  the  dirt  is 
so  ingrained,  so  much  a  second  nature,  that  a  bath 
really    isn't    attractive.      Clean    and    beautiful 


94        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

clothes  sound  like  a  mockery  or  priggishness.  To 
talk  of  spacious  and  beautiful  places  only  arouses 
a  violent  desire  in  the  poor  thing  to  get  away 
somewhere  and  hide.  In  squalor  and  misery,  quar- 
relling and  fighting  make  a  sort  of  nervous  relief. 
To  multitudes  of  slum-bred  people  the  prospect  of 
no  more  fighting  is  a  disagreeable  prospect,  a  dull 
outlook. 

Well,  all  this  world  of  ours  may  seem  a  slum  to 
the  people  of  a  happier  age.  They  will  feel  about 
our  world  just  as  we  feel  about  the  ninth  or  tenth 
century,  when  we  read  of  its  brigands  and  its 
insecurities,  its  pestilences,  its  miserable  housing, 
its  abstinence  from  ablutions. 

But  our  young  citizen  will  not  have  been 
inured  to  our  base  world.  He  will  have  little  of 
our  ingrained  dirt  in  his  mind  and  heart.  He 
will  love.  He  will  love  beautifully.  As  most  of  us 
once  hoped  to  do  in  our  more  romantic  moments. 
He  will  have  ambitions — for  the  World  State  will 
give  great  scope  to  ambition.  He  will  work  skil- 
fully and  brilliantly,  or  he  will  administer  public 
services,  or  he  will  be  an  able  teacher,  or  a  mental 
or  physical  physician,  or  he  will  be  an  interpre- 
tative or  creative  artist;  he  may  be  a  writer  or  a 
scientific  investigator,  he  may  be  a  statesman  in 
his  state,  or  even  a  world  statesman.  If  he  is  a 
statesman  he  may  be  going  up  perhaps  to  the 
federal  world  congress.  In  the  year  2020  there 
will  still  be  politics,  but  they  will  be  great  politics. 
Instead  of  the  world's  affairs  being  managed  in  a 
score  of  foreign  offices,  all  scheming  meanly  and 


THE  ENLARGEMENT  OF  PATRIOTISM      95 

cunningly  against  each  other,  all  planning  to 
thwart  and  injure  each  other,  they  will  be  managed 
under  the  direction  of  an  educated  and  organized 
common  intelligence  intent  only  upon  the  common 
good. 

Dear !  Dear !  Dear !  Does  it  sound  like  rubbish 
to  you?  I  suppose  it  does.  You  think  I  am 
talking  of  a  dreamland,  of  an  unattainable  Utopia? 
Perhaps  I  am !  This  dear,  jolly  old  world  of  dirt, 
war,  bankruptcy,  murder  and  malice,  thwarted 
lives,  wasted  lives,  tormented  lives,  general  ill 
health  and  a  social  decadence  that  spreads  and 
deepens  towards  a,  universal  smash — how  can  we 
hope  to  turn  it  back  from  its  course?  How  prig- 
gish and  impracticable !  How  impertinent !  How 
preposterous!  I  seem  to  hear  a  distant  hoot- 
ing. ...  t  ■     ' 

Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  that  the  barriers  that 
separate  man  and  man  are  nearly  insurmount- 
able and  invincible,  that  we  who  talk  of  a  World 
State  now  are  only  the  pioneers  of  a  vast  uphill 
struggle  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men  that  may 
need  to  be  waged  for  centuries — that  may  fail  in 
the  end. 

Sometimes  again,  in  other  moods,  it  seems  to 
me  that  these  barriers  and  nationalities  and  sep- 
arations are  so  illogical,  so  much  a  matter  of  tra- 
dition, so  plainly  mischievous  and  cruel,  that  at 
any  time  we  may  find  the  common  sense  of  our 
race  dissolving  them  away.  .  .  . 

Who  can  see  into  that  darkest  of  all  mysteries, 
the  hearts  and  wills  of  mankind?    It  may  be  that 


96        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

it  is  well  for  us  not  to  know  of  the  many  genera- 
tions who  will  have  to  sustain  this  conflict. 

Yes,  that  is  one  mood,  and  there  is  the  other. 
Perhaps  we  fear  too  much.  Even  before  our  lives 
run  out  we  may  feel  the  dawn  of  a  greater  age 
perceptible  among  the  black  shadows  and  artificial 
glares  of  these  unhappy  years. 


IV 

the  bible  of  civilization 
Past  One 

In  my  next  two  papers  I  am  going  to  discuss  and 
— what  shall  I  say! — experiment  with  an  old  but 
neglected  idea,  an  idea  that  was  first  broached  I 
believe  about  the  time  when  the  State  of  Con- 
necticut was  coming  into  existence  and  while  New 
York  was  still  the  Dutch  City  of  New  Amsterdam. 

The  man  who  propounded  this  idea  was  a  certain 
great  Bohemian,  Komensky,  who  is  perhaps  better 
known  in  our  western  world  by  his  Latinized  name 
Comenius.  He  professed  himself  the  pupil  of 
Bacon.  He  was  the  friend  of  Milton.  He  travelled 
from  one  European  country  to  another  with  his 
political  and  educational  ideas.  For  a  time  he 
thought  of  coming  to  America.  It  is  a  great  pity 
that  he  never  came.  And  his  idea,  the  particular 
idea  of  his  we  are  going  to  discuss,  was  the  idea  of 
a  common  book,  a  book  of  history,  science  and 
wisdom,  which  should  form  the  basis  and  frame- 
work for  the  thoughts  and  imaginations  of  every 
citizen  in  the  world. 

97 


98        THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

In  many  ways  the  thinkers  and  writers  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century  seem  more  akin  to  us 
and  more  sympathetic  with  the  world  of  to-day, 
than  any  intervening  group  of  literary  figures. 
They  strike  us  as  having  a  longer  vision  than  the 
men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  as  being  bolder 
— and,  how  shall  I  put  it? — more  desperate  in  their 
thinking  than  the  nineteenth  century  minds.  And 
this  closer  affinity  to  our  own  time  arises,  I  should 
think,  directly  and  naturally,  out  of  the  closer  re- 
semblance of  their  circumstances.  Between  1640 
and  1650,  just  as  in  our  present  age,  the  world  was 
tremendously  unsettled  and  distressed.  A  century 
and  more  of  expansion  and  prosperity  had  given 
place  to  a  phase  of  conflict,  exhaustion,  and  entire 
political  unsettlement.  Britain  was  involved  in 
the  bitter  political  struggle  that  culminated  in  the 
execution  of  King  Charles  I.  Ireland  was  a  land 
of  massacre  and  counter-massacre.  The  Thirty 
Years'  War  in  Central  Europe  was  in  its  closing, 
most  dreadful  stages  of  famine  and  plunder.  In 
France  the  crown  and  the  nobles  were  striving 
desperately  for  ascendancy  in  the  War  of  the 
Fronde.  The  Turk  threatened  Vienna.  Nowhere 
in  Western  Europe  did  there  remain  any  secure 
and  settled  political  arrangements.  Everywhere 
there  was  disorder,  everywhere  it  seemed  that 
anything  might  happen,  and  it  is  just  those  dis- 
ordered and  indeterminate  times  that  are  most 
fruitful  of  bold  religious  and  social  and  political 
and  educational  speculations  and  initiatives. 

This  was  the  period  that  produced  the  Quakers 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  99 

and  a  number  of  the  most  vigorous  developments 
of  Puritanism,  in  which  the  foundations  of  modern 
republicanism  were  laid,  and  in  which  the  project 
of  a  world  league  of  nations — or  rather  of  a  world 
state — received  wide  attention.  And  the  student 
of  Comenius  will  find  in  him  an  active  and  sensitive 
mind  responding  with  a  most  interesting  similar- 
ity to  our  own  responses,  to  the  similar  conditions 
of  his  time.  He  has  been  distressed  and  dismayed 
— as  most  of  us  have  been  distressed  and  dismayed 
— by  a  rapid  development  of  violence,  by  a  great 
release  of  cruelty  and  suffering  in  human  affairs. 
He  felt  none  of  the  security  that  was  felt  in  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  of  the  cer- 
tainty of  progress.  He  realized  as  we  do  that  the 
outlook  for  humanity  is  a  very  dark  and  uncer- 
tain one  unless  human  effort  is  stimulated  and 
organized.  He  traced  the  evils  of  his  time  to 
human  discords  and  divisions,  to  our  political  di- 
visions, and  the  mutual  misconceptions  due  to  our 
diversity  of  languages  and  leading  ideas.  In  all 
that  he  might  be  writing  and  thinking  in  1921. 
And  his  proposed  remedies  find  an  echo  in  a 
number  of  our  contemporary  movements.  He 
wanted  to  bring  all  nations  to  form  one  single 
state.  He  wanted  to  have  a  universal  language 
as  the  common  medium  of  instruction  and  discus- 
sion, and  he  wanted  to  create  a  common  Book  of 
Necessary  Knowledge,  a  sort  of  common  basis  of 
wisdom,  for  all  educated  men  in  the  world. 

Now  this  last  is  the  idea  I  would  like  to  de- 
velop now.    I  would  like  to  discuss  whether  our 


100      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

education — which  nowadays  in  our  modern  states 
reaches  everyone — whether  our  education  can  in- 
clude and  ought  to  include  such  a  Book  of  Neces- 
sary Knowledge  and  Wisdom;  and  (having 
attempted  to  answer  that  enquiry  in  the  affirma- 
tive) I  shall  then  attempt  a  sketch  of  such  a  book. 

But  to  begin  with  perhaps  I  may  meet  an  ob- 
jection that  is  likely  to  arise.  I  have  called  this 
hypothetical  book  of  ours  the  Bible  of  Civilization, 
and  it  may  be  that  someone  will  say:  Yes,  but 
you  have  a  sufficient  book  of  that  sort  already; 
you  have  the  Bible  itself  and  that  is  all  you  need. 
Well,  I  am  taking  the  Bible  as  my  model.  I  am 
taking  it  because  twice  in  history — first  as  the  Old 
Testament  and  then  again  as  the  Old  and  New 
Testament  together — it  has  formed  a  culture,  and 
unified  and  kept  together  through  many  genera- 
tions great  masses  of  people.  It  has  been  the 
basis  of  the  Jewish  and  Christian  civilizations 
alike.  And  even  in  the  New  World  the  State  of 
Connecticut  did,  I  believe,  in  its  earliest  begin- 
nings take  the  Bible  as  its  only  law.  Nevertheless, 
I  hope  I  shall  not  offend  any  reader,  if  I  point 
out  that  the  Bible  is  not  all  that  we  need 
to-day,  and  that  also  in  some  respects  it  is  re- 
dundant. Its  very  virtues  created  its  limitations. 
It  served  men  so  well  that  they  made  a  Canon 
of  it  and  refused  to  alter  it  further.  Throughout 
the  most  vital  phases  of  Hebrew  history,  through- 
out the  most  living  years  of  Christian  development 
the  Bible  changed  and  grew.  Then  its  growth 
ceased  and  its  text  became  fixed.    But  the  world 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  101 

went  on  growing  and  discovering  new  needs  and 
new  necessities. 

Let  me  deal  first  with  its  redundancy.  So  far 
as  redundancy  goes,  a  great  deal  of  the  Book  of 
Leviticus,  for  example,  seems  not  vitally  necessary 
for  the  ordinary  citizen  of  to-day;  there  are  long 
explicit  directions  for  temple  worship  and  sacri- 
ficial procedure.  There  is  again,  so  far  as  the 
latter  day  citizen  is  concerned,  an  excess  of  in- 
formation about  the  minor  Kings  of  Israel  and 
Judah.  And  there  is  more  light  than  most  of  us 
feel  we  require  nowadays  upon  the  foreign  policies 
of  Assyria  and  Egypt.  It  stirs  our  pulses  feebly, 
it  helps  us  only  very  indirectly  to  learn  that  Attai 
begat  Nathan  and  Nathan  begat  Zabad,  or  that 
Obed  begat  Jehu  and  Jehu  begat  Azariah,  and 
so  on  for  two  or  three  hundred  verses. 

And  so  far  as  deficiencies  go,  there  is  a  great 
multitude  of  modern  problems — problems  that 
enter  intimately  into  the  moral  life  of  all  of  us, 
with  which  the  Bible  does  not  deal,  the  establish- 
ment of  American  Independence,  for  example,  and 
the  age-long  feud  of  Bussia  and  Poland  that  has 
gone  on  with  varying  fortunes  for  four  centuries. 
That  is  much  more  important  to  our  modern  world 
than  the  ancient  conflict  of  Assyria  and  Egypt 
which  plays  so  large  a  part  in  the  old  Bible  record. 
And  there  are  all  sorts  of  moral  problems  arising 
out  of  modern  conditions  on  which  the  Bible  sheds 
little  or  no  direct  light;  the  duties  of  a  citizen  at 
an  election,  or  the  duties  of  a  shareholder  to  the 
labour  employed  by  his  company,  for  example. 


102       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

For  these  things  we  need  at  least  a  supplement,  if 
we  are  still  to  keep  our  community  upon  one  gen- 
eral basis  of  understanding,  upon  one  unifying 
standard  of  thought  and  behaviour. 

We  are  so  brought  up  upon  the  Bible,  we  are  so 
used  to  it  long  before  we  begin  to  think  hard  about 
it,  that  all  sorts  of  things  that  are  really  very 
striking  about  it,  the  facts  that  the  history  of 
Judah  and  Israel  is  told  twice  over  and  that  the 
gospel  narrative  is  repeated  four  times  over  for 
example,  do  not  seem  at  all  odd  to  us.  How  else, 
we  ask,  could  you  have  it  1  Yet  these  are  very  odd 
features  if  we  are  to  regard  the  Bible  as  the 
compactest  and  most  perfect  statement  of  essen- 
tial truth  and  wisdom. 

And  still  more  remarkable,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  it  that  the  Bible  breaks  off.  One  could  under- 
stand very  well  if  the  Bible  broke  off  with  the 
foundation  of  Christianity.  Now  this  event  has 
happened,  it  might  say,  nothing  else  matters.  It 
is  the  culmination.  But  the  Bible  does  not  do 
that.  It  goes  on  to  a  fairly  detailed  account  of 
the  beginnings  and  early  politics  of  the  Christian 
Church.  It  gives  the  opening  literature  of  theo- 
logical exposition.  And  then,  with  that  strange 
and  doubtful  book,  the  Eevelation  of  St.  John  the 
Divine,  it  comes  to  an  end.  As  I  say,  it  leaves  off. 
It  leaves  off  in  the  middle  of  Eoman  imperial  and 
social  conflicts.  But  the  world  has  gone  on  and 
goes  on — elaborating  its  problems,  encountering 
fresh  problems — until  now  there  is  a  gulf  of  up- 
wards of  eighteen  hundred  years  between  us  and 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  103 

the  concluding  expression  of  the  thought  of  that 
ancient  time. 

I  make  these  observations  in  no  spirit  of  de- 
traction. If  anything,  these  peculiarities  of  the 
Bible  add  to  the  wonder  of  its  influence  over  the 
lives  and  minds  of  men.  It  has  been  The  Book 
that  has  held  together  the  fabric  of  western  civili- 
zation. It  has  been  the  handbook  of  life  to  count- 
less millions  of  men  and  women.  The  civilization 
we  possess  could  not  have  come  into  existence  and 
could  not  have  been  sustained  without  it.  It  has 
explained  the  world  to  the  mass  of  our  people,  and 
it  has  given  them  moral  standards  and  a  form 
into  which  their  consciences  could  work.  But  does 
it  do  that  to-day?  Frankly,  I  do  not  think  it  does. 
I  think  that  during  the  last  century  the  Bible  has 
lost  much  of  its  former  hold.  It  no  longer  grips 
the  community.  And  I  think  it  has  lost  hold  be- 
cause of  those  sundering  eighteen  centuries,  to 
which  every  fresh  year  adds  itself,  because  of 
profound  changes  in  the  methods  and  mechanisms 
of  life,  and  because  of  the  vast  extension  of  our 
ideas  by  the  development  of  science  in  the  last 
century  or  so. 

It  has  lost  hold,  but  nothing  has  arisen  to  take 
its  place.  That  is  the  gravest  aspect  of  this  mat- 
ter. It  was  the  cement  with  which  our  western 
communities  were  built  and  by  which  they  were 
held  together.  And  the  weathering  of  these  cen- 
turies and  the  acids  of  these  later  years  have  eaten 
into  its  social  and  personal  influence.  It  is  no 
longer  a  sufficient  cement.    And — this  is  the  es- 


104       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

sence  of  what  I  am  driving  at — our  modern  com- 
mwiities  are  no  longer  cemented,  they  lack  organ- 
ized solidarity,  they  are  not  prepared  to  stand 
shocks  and  strains,  they  have  become  dangerously 
loose  mentally  and  morally.  That,  I  believe,  is 
the  clue  to  a  great  proportion  of  the  present  social 
and  political  troubles  of  the  world.  We  need  to 
get  back  to  a  cement.  We  want  a  Bible.  We  want 
a  Bible  so  badly  that  we  cannot  afford  to  put  the 
old  Bible  on  a  pinnacle  out  of  daily  use.  We  want 
it  re-adapted  for  use.  If  it  is  true  that  the  old 
Bible  falls  short  in  its  history  and  does  not  apply 
closely  to  many  modern  problems,  then  we  need 
a  revised  and  enlarged  Bible  in  our  schools  and 
homes  to  restore  a  common  ground  of  ideas  and 
interpretations  if  our  civilization  is  to  hold  to- 
gether. 

Now  let  us  see  what  the  Bible  gave  a  man  in 
the  days  when  it  could  really  grip  and  hold  and 
contain  him;  and  let  us  ask  if  it  is  impossible  to 
restore  and  reconstruct  a  Bible  for  the  needs  of 
these  great  and  dangerous  days  in  which  we  are 
living.  Can  we  re-cement  our  increasingly  un- 
stable civilization?  I  will  not  ask  now  whether 
there  is  still  time  left  for  us  to  do  anything  of 
the  sort. 

The  first  thing  the  Bible  gave  a  man  was  a  Cos- 
mogony. It,  gave  him  an  account  of  the  world  in 
which  he  found  himself  and  of  his  place  in  it. ,  And 
then  it  went  on  to  a  general  history  of  mankind.  It 
did  not  tell  him  that  history  as  a  string  of  facts 
and  dates,  but  as  a  moving  and  interesting  story 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  105 

into  which  he  himself  finally  came,  a  story  of 
promises  made  and  destinies  to  be  fulfilled.  It 
gave  him  a  dramatic  relationship  to  the  schemes 
of  things.  It  linked  him  to  all  mankind  with  a 
conception  of  relationships  and  duties.  It  gave 
him  a  place  in  the  world  and  put  a  meaning  into 
his  life.  It  explained  him  to  himself  and  to  other 
people,  and  it  explained  other  people  to  him.  In 
other  words,  out  of  the  individual  it  made  a  citizen 
with  a  code  of  duties  and  expectations. 

Now  I  take  it  that  both  from  the  point  of 
view  of  individual  happiness  and  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  general  welfare,  this  development 
of  the  citizenship  of  a  man,  this  placing  of  a  man 
in  his  own  world,  is  of  primary  importance.  It  is 
the  necessary  basis  of  all  right  education;  it  is 
the  fundamental  purpose  of  the  school,  and  I  do 
not  believe  an  individual  can  be  happy  or  a  com- 
munity be  prosperous  without  it.  The  Bible  and 
the  religions  based  on  it,  gave  that  idea  of  a  place 
in  the  world  to  the  people  it  taught.  But  do  we 
provide  that  idea  of  a  place  in  the  world  for  our 
people  to-day?  I  suggest  that  we  do  not.  We 
do  not  give  them  a  clear  vision  of  the  universe 
in  which  they  live,  and  we  do  not  give  them  a 
history  that  invests  their  lives  with  meaning  and 
dignity. 

The  cosmogony  of  the  Bible  has  lost  grip  and 
conviction  upon  men's  minds,  and  the  ever- widen- 
ing gulf  of  years  makes  its  history  and  its  political 
teaching  more  and  more  remote  and  unhelpful 
amidst  the  great  needs  of  to-day.     Nothing  has 


106       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

been  done  to  fill  np  these  widening  gaps.  We 
have  so  great  a  respect  for  the  letter  of  the  Bible 
that  we  ignore  its  spirit  and  its  proper  use.  We 
do  not  rewrite  and  retell  Genesis  in  the  light  and 
language  of  modern  knowledge,  and  we  do  not 
revise  and  bring  its  history  up  to  date  and  so  apply 
it  to  the  problems  of  our  own  time.  So  we  have 
allowed  the  Bible  to  become  antiquated  and  re- 
mote, venerable  and  unhelpful. 

There  has  been  a  great  extension  of  what  we  call 
education  in  the  past  hundred  years,  but  while  we 
have  spread  education  widely,  there  has  been  a 
sort  of  shrinkage  and  enfeeblement  of  its  aims. 
Education  in  the  past  set  out  to  make  a  Christian 
and  a  citizen  and  afterwards  a  gentleman  out  of 
the  crude,  vulgar,  self-seeking  individual.  Does 
education  even  pretend  to  do  as  much  to-day?  It 
does  nothing  of  the  sort.  Our  young  people  are 
taught  to  read  and  write.  They  are  taught  book- 
keeping and  languages  that  are  likely  to  be  useful 
to  them.  They  are  given  a  certain  measure  of 
technical  education,  and  they  are  taught  to  shove. 
And  then  we  turn  them  out  into  the  world  to  get 
on.  Our  test  of  a  college  education  is — Does  it 
make  a  successful  business  man? 

Well,  this,  I  take  it,  is  the  absolute  degradation 
of  education.  It  is  a  modern  error  that  education 
exists  for  the  individual.  Education  exists  for 
the  community  and  the  race ;  it  exists  to  subdue  the 
individual  for  the  good  of  the  world  and  his  own 
ultimate  happiness. 

But  we  have  been  letting  the  essentials  of  educa- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  107 

tion  slip  back  into  a  secondary  place  in  our  pur- 
suit of  mere  equipment,  and  we  see  the  results 
to-day  throughout  all  the  modern  states  of  the 
world,  in  a  loss  of  cohesion,  discipline  and  co- 
operation. Men  will  not  co-operate  except  to  raise 
prices  on  the  consumer  or  wages  on  the  employer, 
and  everyone  scrambles  for  a  front  place  and  a 
good  time.  And  they  do  so,  partly  no  doubt  by 
virtue  of  an  ineradicable  factor  in  them  known  as 
Original  Sin,  but  also  very  largely  because  the 
vision  of  life  that  was  built  up  in  their  minds  at 
school  and  in  their  homes  was  fragmentary  and 
uninspiring;  it  had  no  commanding  appeal  for 
their  imaginations,  and  no  imperatives  for  their 
lives. 

So  I  put  it,  that  for  the  opening  books  of  our 
Bible  of  Civilization,  our  Bible  translated  into 
terms  of  modern  knowledge,  and  as  the  basis  of 
all  our  culture,  we  shall  follow  the  old  Bible  pre- 
cedent exactly.  We  shall  tell  to  every  citizen  of 
our  community,  as  plainly,  simply  and  beautifully 
as  we  can,  the  New  Story  of  Genesis,  the  tremen- 
dous spectacle  of  the  Universe  that  science  has 
opened  to  us,  the  flaming  beginnings  of  our  world, 
the  vast  ages  of  its  making  and  the  astounding 
unfolding,  age  after  a^e,  of  Life.  We  shall  tell  of 
the  changing  climates  of  this  spinning  globe  and 
the  coming  and  going  of  great  floras  and  faunas, 
mighty  races  of  living  things,  until  out  of  the 
vast,  slow  process  our  own  kind  emerged.  And 
we  shall  tell  the  story  of  our  race.  How  through 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  it  won  power  ov^r 


108      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

nature,  hunted  and  presently  sowed  and  reaped. 
How  it  learnt  the  secrets  of  the  metals,  mastered 
the  riddle  of  the  seasons,  and  took  to  the  seas. 
That  story  of  our  common  inheritance  and  of  our 
slow  upward  struggle  has  to  be  taught  throughout 
our  entire  community,  in  the  city  slums  and  in  the 
out-of-the-way  farmsteads  most  of  all.  By  teach- 
ing it,  we  restore  again  to  our  people  the  lost  basis 
of  a  community,  a  common  idea  of  their  place  in 
space  and  time. 

Then,  still  following  the  Bible  precedent,  we 
must  tell  a  universal  history  of  man.  And  though 
on  the  surface  it  may  seem  to  be  a  very  different 
history  from  the  Bible  story,  in  substance  it  will 
really  be  very  much  the  same  history,  only  robbed 
of  ancient  trappings  and  symbols,  and  made  real 
and  fresh  again  for  our  present  ideas.  It  will  still 
be  a  story  of  conditional  promises,  the  promises  of 
human  possibility,  a  record  of  sins  and  blunders 
and  lost  opportunities,  of  men  who  walked  not  in 
the  ways  of  righteousness,  of  stiff-necked  genera- 
tions, and  of  merciful  renewals  of  hope.  It  will 
still  point  our  lives  to  a  common  future  which  will 
be  the  reward  and  judgment  of  our  present  lives. 

You  may  say  that  no  such  book  exists — which  is 
perfectly  true — and  that  no  such  book  could  be 
written.  But  there  I  think  you  underrate  the 
capacity  of  our  English-speaking  people.  It  would 
be  quite  possible  to  get  together  a  committee  that 
would  give  us  the  compact  and  clear  cosmogony 
of  history  that  is  needed.  Some  of  the  greatest, 
most  inspiring  books  and  documents  in  the  world 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  109 

have  been  produced  by  Committees :  Magna  Carta, 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  English 
Translation  of  the  Bible,  and  the  Prayer  Book  of 
the  English  Church  are  all  the  productions  of  com- 
mittees, and  they  are  all  fine  and  inspiring  com- 
pilations. For  the  last  three  years  I  have  been  ex- 
perimenting with  this  particular  task,  and,  with 
the  help  of  six  other  people,  I  have  sketched  out 
and  published  an  outline  of  our  world's  origins 
and  history  to  show  the  sort  of  thing  I  mean. 
That  Outline  is,  of  course,  a  corrupting  mass  of 
faults  and  minor  inaccuracies,  but  it  does  demon- 
strate the  possibility  of  doing  what  is  required. 
And  its  reception  both  in  America  and  England 
has  shown  how  ready,  how  greedy  many  people 
are,  on  account  of  themselves  and  on  account  of 
their  children,  for  an  ordered  general  account  of 
the  existing  knowledge  of  our  place  in  space  and 
time.  For  want  of  anything  better  they  have 
taken  my  Outline  very  eagerly.  Far  more  eagerly 
would  they  have  taken  a  finer,  sounder  and  more 
authoritative  work. 

In  England  this  Outline  was  almost  the  first 
experiment  of  the  kind  that  has  been  made — the 
only  other  I  know  of  in  England,  was  a  very 
compact  General  History  of  the  World  by  Mr. 
Oscar  Browning  published  in  1913.  But  there  are 
several  educationists  in  America  who  have  been 
at  work  on  the  same  task.  In  this  matter  of  a 
more  generalized  history  teaching,  the  New  World 
is  decidedly  leading  the  Old.    The  particular  prob- 


110      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

lems  of  a  population  of  mixed  origins  have  forced 
it  upon  teachers  in  the  United  States. 

My  friend — I  am  very  happy  to  be  able  to  call 
him  my  friend — Professor  Breasted,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  that  very  able  teacher  Professor 
Eobinson,  has  produced  two  books,  "Ancient 
Times* '  and  "Mediaeval  and  Modern  Times,' ' 
which  together  make  a  very  complete  history  of 
civilized  man.  They  do  not,  however,  give  a  his- 
tory of  life  before  man,  nor  very  much  of  human 
pre-history.  Another  admirable  American  sum- 
mary of  history  is  Doctor  Hutton  Webster's  "His- 
tory of  the  Ancient  World' '  together  with  his 
"Mediaeval  and  Modern  History."  This  again  is 
very  sparing  of  the  story  of  primitive  man. 

But  the  work  of  these  gentlemen  confirms  my 
own  experience  that  it  is  quite  possible  to  tell  in 
a  comprehensible  and  inspiring  outline  the  whole 
history  of  life  and  mankind  in  the  compass  of  a 
couple  of  manageable  volumes.  Neither  Browning 
nor  Breasted  and  Eobinson,  nor  Hutton  Webster, 
nor  my  own  effort  are  very  much  longer  than 
twice  the  length  of  Dickens'  novel  of  "Bleak 
House. ' '  So  there  you  have  it.  There  is  the  thing 
shown  to  be  possible.  If  it  is  possible  for  us 
isolated  workers  to  do  as  much,  then  why  should 
not  the  thing  be  done  in  a,  big  and  authoritative 
manner?  Why  should  we  not  have  a  great  educa- 
tional conference  of  teachers,  scientific  men  and 
historians  from  all  the  civilized  peoples  of  the 
world,  and  why  should  they  not  draft  out  a  stand- 
ard World  History  for  general  use  in  the  world's 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  111 

schools  f  Why  should  that  draft  not  be  revised  by 
scores  of  specialists?  Discussed  and  re-discussed? 
Polished  and  finished,  and  made  the  opening  part 
of  a  new  Bible  of  Civilization,  a  new  common 
basis  for  a  world  culture? 

At  intervals  it  would  need  to  be  revised,,  and  it 
could  be  revised  and  brought  up  to  date  in  the 
same  manner. 

Now  such  a  book  and  such  a  book  alone  would 
put  the  people  of  the  world  upon  an  absolutely  new 
footing  with  regard  to  social  and  international 
affairs.  They  would  be  told  a  history  coming 
right  up  to  the  Daily  Newspaper.  They  would 
see  themselves  and  the  news  of  to-day  as  part  of 
one  great  development.  It  would  give  their  lives 
significance  and  dignity.  It  would  give  the  events 
of  the  current  day  significance  and  dignity.  It 
would  lift  their  imaginations  up  to  a  new  level. 
I  say  lift,  but  I  mean  restore  their  imaginations 
to  a  former  level.  Because  if  you  look  back  into 
the  lives  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  let  us  say,  or  into 
those  of  the  great  soldiers  and  statesmen  of  Crom- 
wellian  England,  you  will  find  that  these  men 
had  a  sense  of  personal  significance,  a  sense  of 
destiny,  such  as  no  one  in  politics  or  literature 
seems  to  possess  to-day.  They  were  still  in  touch 
with  the  old  Bible.  To-day  if  life  seems  adventur- 
ous and  fragmentary  and  generally  aimless  it  is 
largely  because  of  this  one  thing.  We  have  lost 
touch  with  history.  We  have  ceased  to  see  human 
affairs  as  one  great  epic  unfolding.    And  only  by 


112       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

the  universal  teaching  of  Universal  History  can 
that  epic  quality  be  restored. 

You  see  then  the  first  part  of  my  project  for  a 
Bible  of  Civilization,  a  rewriting  of  Genesis  and 
Exodus  and  Judges  and  Chronicles  in  terms  of 
World  History.  It  would  be  a  quite  possible  thing 
to  do.  .  .  . 

Is  it  worth  doing? 

And  let  me  add  here  that  when  we  do  get  our 
New  Genesis  and  our  new  historical  books,  they 
will  have  a  great  number  of  illustrations  as  a  liv- 
ing and  necessary  part  of  them.  For  nowadays 
we  can  not  only  have  a  canonical  text,  but  canon- 
ical maps  and  illustrations.  The  old  Hebrew  Bible 
was  merely  the  written  word.  Indeed  it  was  not 
even  that,  for  it  was  written  without  vowels.  That 
was  not  a  merit,  nor  a  precedent  for  us;  it  was 
an  unavoidable  limitation  in  those  days ;  but  under 
modern  conditions  there  is  no  reason  whatever 
why  we  should  confine  our  Bible  to  words  when 
a  drawing  or  a  map  can  better  express  the  thing 
we  wish  to  convey.  It  is  one  of  the  great  ad- 
vantages of  the  modern  book  over  the  ancient 
book  that  because  of  printing  it  can  use  pictures  as 
well  as  words.  When  books  had  to  be  reproduced 
by  copyists  the  use  of  pictures  was  impossible. 
They  would  have  varied  with  each  copying  until 
they  became  hopelessly  distorted.  .  .  . 


§2 

But  the  cosmological  and  historical  part  of  the 
old  Bible  was  merely  the  opening,  the  ground- 
work upon  which  the  rest  was  built.  Let  us  now 
consider  what  else  the  Bible  gave  a  man  and  a 
community,  and  what  would  be  the  modern  form 
of  the  things  it  gave. 

The  next  thing  in  order  that  the  Bible  gave  a 
man  and  the  community  to  which  he  belonged,  was 
the  Law.  Eules  of  Life.  Bules  of  Health.  Pre- 
scriptions— often  very  detailed  and  intimate — of 
permissible  and  unpermissible  conduct.  This  also 
the  modern  citizen  needs  and  should  have :  he  and 
she  need  a  book  of  personal  wisdom. 

First  as  to  Health.  One  of  the  first  duties  of 
a  citizen  is  to  keep  himself  in  mental  and  bodily 
health  in  order  to  be  fit  for  the  rest  of  his  duties. 
Now  the  real  Bible,  our  model,  is  extremely  ex- 
plicit upon  a  number  of  points,  upon  what  con- 
stitutes cleanness  or  uncleanness,  upon  ablutions, 
upon  what  a  man  or  woman  may  eat  and  what  may 
not  be  eaten,  upon  a  number  of  such  points.  It 
was  for  its  times  and  circumstances  a  directory  of 
healthy  practice.  Well,  I  do  not  see  why  the 
Bible  of  a  Modern  Civilization  should  not  contain 
a  book  of  similarly  clear  injunctions  and  warnings 

113 


114       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

— why  we  should  not  tell  every  one  of  our  people 
what  is  to  be  known  about  self-care. 

And  closely  connected  with  the  care  of  one's 
mental  and  bodily  health  is  sexual  morality,  upon 
which  again  Deuteronomy  and  Leviticus  are  most 
explicit,  leaving  very  little  to  the  imagination.  I 
am  all  for  imitating  the  wholesome  frankness  of 
the  ancient  book.  Where  there  are  no  dark  cor- 
ners there  is  very  little  fermentation,  there  is  very 
little  foulness  or  infection.  But  in  nearly  every 
detail  and  in  method  and  manner,  the  Bible  of 
our  Civilization  needs  to  be  fuller  and  different 
from  its  prototype  upon  these  matters.  The  real 
Bible  dealt  with  an  oriental  population  living 
under  much  cruder  conditions  than  our  own,  en- 
gaged mainly  in  agriculture,  and  with  a  far  less 
varied  dietary  than  ours.  They  had  fermented 
but  not  distilled  liquors;  they  had  no  preserved 
nor  refrigerated  foods;  they  married  at  adoles- 
cence; many  grave  diseases  that  prevail  to-day 
were  unknown  to  them,  and  their  sanitary  prob- 
lems were  entirely  different.  Generally  our  New 
Leviticus  will  have  to  be  much  fuller.  It  must 
deal  with  exercise — which  came  naturally  to  those 
Hebrew  shepherds.  It  must  deal  with  the  preser- 
vation of  energy  under  conditions  of  enervation  of 
which  the  prophets  knew  nothing.  On  the  other 
hand  our  New  Leviticus  can  afford  to  give  much 
less  attention  to  leprosy — which  almost  dominates 
the  health  instructions  of  the  ancient  law-giver. 

I  do  not  know  anything  very  much  about  the 
movements  in  America  that  aim  at  the  improve- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  115 

ment  of  the  public  health  and  at  the  removal  of 
public  ignorance  upon  vital  things.  In  Britain 
we  have  a  number  of  powerful  organizations  ac- 
tive in  disseminating  knowledge  to  counteract  the 
spread  of  this  or  that  infectious  or  contagious  dis- 
ease. The  "War  has  made  us  in  Europe  much  more 
outspoken  and  fearless  in  dealing  with  lurking 
hideous  evils.  We  believe  much  more  than  we  did 
in  the  curative  value  of  light  and  knowledge.  And 
we  have  a  very  considerable  literature  of  books  on 
— what  shall  I  call  it  1 — on  Sex  Wisdom,  which  aim 
to  prevent  some  of  that  great  volume  of  misery, 
deprivation  and  nervous  disease  due  to  the  pre- 
vailing ignorance  and  secrecy  in  these  matters. 
For  in  these  matters  great  multitudes  of  modern 
people  still  live  in  an  ignorance  that  would  have 
been  inconceivable  to  an  ancient  Hebrew.  In  Eng- 
land now  the  books  of  such  a  writer  as  Dr.  Marie 
Stopes  are  enormously  read,  and — though  they  are 
by  no  means  perfect  works — do  much  to  mitigate 
the  hidden  disappointments,  discontents,  stresses 
and  cruelties  of  married  life.  Now  I  believe  that 
it  would  be  possible  to  compile  a  modern  Leviticus 
and  Deuteronomy  to  tell  our  whole  modern  com- 
munity decently  and  plainly — just  as  plainly  as  the 
old  Hebrew  Bible  instructed  its  Hebrew  popula- 
tion— what  was  to  be  known  and  what  had  to  be 
done,  and  what  had  not  to  be  done  in  these  inti- 
mate matters. 

But  Health  and  Sex  do  not  exhaust  the  prob- 
lems of  conduct.  There  are  also  the  problems  of 
Property  and  Trade  and  Labour.      Upon  these 


116      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

also  the  old  Bible  did  not  hesitate  to  be  explicit. 
For  example,  it  insisted  meticulously  upon  the 
right  of  labour  to  glean  and  upon  the  seller  giving 
a  "full  measure  brimming  over,"  and  it  prohibited 
usury.  But  here  again  the  Bible  is  extraordinarily 
unhelpful  when  we  come  to  modern  issues,  because 
its  rules  and  regulations  were  framed  for  a  com- 
munity and  for  an  economic  system  altogether 
cruder,  more  limited  and  less  complicated  than  our 
own.  Much  of  the  Old  Testament  we  have  to 
remember  was  already  in  existence  before  the  free 
use  of  coined  metal.  The  vast  credit  system  of 
our  days,  joint-stock  company  enterprise  and  the 
like,  were  beyond  the  imagination  of  that  time.  So 
too  was  any  anticipation  of  modern  industrialism. 
And  accordingly  we  live  to-day  in  a  world  in  which 
neither  property  nor  employment  have  ever  been 
properly  moralized.  The  bulk  of  our  present 
social  and  economic  troubles  is  due  very  largely 
to  that. 

In  no  matter  is  this  muddled  civilization  of  ours 
more  hopelessly  at  sixes  and  sevens  than  in  this 
matter  of  the  rights  and  duties  of  property.  Mani- 
festly property  is  a  trust  for  the  community  vary- 
ing in  its  responsibilities  with  the  nature  of  the 
property.  The  property  one  has  in  one's  tooth- 
brush is  different  from  the  property  one  has  in  ten 
thousand  acres  of  land ;  the  property  one  has  in  a 
photograph  of  a  friend  is  different  from  the  prop- 
erty one  has  in  some  irreplaceable  masterpiece  of 
portraiture.    The  former  one  may  destroy  with 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  117 

a  good  conscience,  but  not  the  latter.     At  least 
so  it  seems  to  me. 

But  opinions  vary  enormously  on  these  matters 
because  we  have  never  really  worked  them  out. 
On  the  one  hand,  in  this  matter  of  property,  we 
have  the  extreme  individualist  who  declares  that  a 
man  has  an  unlimited  right  to  do  what  he  likes 
with  his  own — so  that  a  man  who  owns  a  coal  mine 
may  just  burn  it  out  to  please  himself  or  spite  the 
world,  or  raise  the  price  of  coal  generally — and  on 
the  other  hand  we  have  the  extreme  communist 
who  denies  all  property  and  in  practice — so  far  as 
I  can  understand  his  practice — goes  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  everything  belongs  to  somebody  else  or 
that  one  is  entitled  to  exercise  proprietary  rights 
over  everything  that  does  not  belong  to  oneself. 
(I  confess  that  communistic  practice  is  a  little 
difficult  to  formulate.)  Between  these  extremists 
you  can  find  every  variety  of  idea  about  what  one 
may  do  and  about  what  one  may  not  do  with  money 
and  credit  and  property  generally.  Is  it  an  offence 
to  gamble!  Is  it  an  offence  to  speculate?  Is  it  an 
offence  to  hold  fertile  fields  and  not  cultivate 
them?  Is  it  an  offence  to  hold  fertile  fields  and 
undercultivate  them?  Is  it  an  offence  to  use  your 
invested  money  merely  to  live  pleasantly  without 
working?  Is  it  an  offence  to  spend  your  money 
on  yourself  and  refuse  your  wife  more  than  bare 
necessities?  Is  it  an  offence  to  spend  exorbitant 
sums  that  might  otherwise  go  in  reproductive  in- 
vestments, to  gratify  the  whims  and  vanities  of 
your  wife  ?    You  will  find  different  people  answer- 


118       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

ing  any  of  these  questions  with  Yes  and  No.  But 
it  cannot  be  both  Yes  and  No.  There  must  be  a 
definable  Eight  or  Wrong  upon  all  these  issues. 

Almost  all  the  labour  trouble  in  the  world 
springs  directly  from  our  lack  of  an  effective  de- 
tailed moral  code  about  property.  The  freedom 
that  is  claimed  for  all  sorts  of  property  and  exer- 
cised by  all  sorts  of  property  to  waste  or  with- 
hold is  the  clue  to  that  savage  resentment  which 
flares  out  nowadays  in  every  great  labour  conflict. 
Labour  is  a  rebel  because  property  is  a  libertine. 

Now  this  untilled  field  of  conduct,  this  moral 
wilderness  of  the  rights  and  duties  and  limitations 
of  property,  the  Books  of  the  Law  in  a  modern 
Bible  could  clear  up  in  the  most  lucid  and  satisfy- 
ing way.  I  want  to  get  those  parts  of  Deuteron- 
omy and  Leviticus  written  again,  more  urgently 
than  any  other  part  of  the  modern  Bible.  I  want 
to  see  it  at  work  in  the  schools  and  in  the  law- 
courts.  I  admit  that  it  would  be  a  most  difficult 
book  to  write  and  that  we  should  raise  controver- 
sial storms  over  every  verse.  But  what  an  excel- 
lent thing  to  have  it  out,  once  for  all,  with  some  of 
these  rankling  problems !  What  an  excellent  thing 
if  we  could  get  together  a  choice  group  of  repre- 
sentative men — strictly  rationed  as  to  paper — and 
get  them  to  set  down  clearly  and  exactly  just  what 
classes  of  property  they  recognized  and  what  limi- 
tations the  community  was  entitled  to  impose  upon 
each  sort. 
f  Every  country  in  the  world  does  impose  limita- 
tions.   In  Italy  you  may  not  export  an  ancient 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  119 

work  of  art,  although  it  is  your  own.  In  England- 
you  may  not  maltreat  your  own  dog  or  cat.  In 
the  United  States,  I  am  told,  you  may  not  use 
your  dollars  to  buy  alcohol.  Why  should  we  not 
make  all  this  classification  of  property  and  the 
restraints  upon  each  class  of  property,  systematic 
and  world-wide?  If  we  could  so  moralize  the  use 
of  property,  if  we  could  arrive  at  a  clear  idea  of 
just  what  use  an  owner  could  make  of  his  machin- 
ery, or  a  financier  could  make  of  his  credit,  would 
there  be  much  left  of  the  incessant  labour  conflicts 
of  the  present  time!  For  if  you  will  look  into  it, 
you  will  find  there  is  hardly  ever  a  labour  conflict 
into  which  some  unsettled  question  of  principle, 
some  unsettled  question  of  the  permissible  use  of 
property,  does  not  enter  as  the  final  and  essential 
dispute. 


the  bible  of  civilization" 
Pakt  Two 

$1 

In  the  preceding  sections  we  have  discussed 
Genesis  and  the  Historical  Books  generally  as 
they  would  appear  in  a  modernized  Bible,  and 
we  have  dealt  with  the  Law.  But  these  are  only 
the  foundations  and  openings  of  the  Bible  as  we 
know  it.  We  come  now  to  the  Psalms  and  Prov- 
erbs, the  Song  of  Songs,  the  Book  of  Job — and 
the  Prophets.  What  are  the  modern  equivalents 
of  these  books? 

Well,  what  were  they? 

They  were  the  entire  Hebrew  literature  down  to 
about  the  time  of  Ezra ;  they  include  sacred  songs, 
love  songs,  a  dramatic  dialogue,  a  sort  of  novel 
in  the  Books  of  Euth  and  Esther,  and  so  forth. 
What  would  be  our  equivalent  of  this  part  of  the 
Bible  to-day?  What  would  be  the  equivalent  for 
the  Bible  of  a  World  Civilization? 

I  suppose  that  it  would  be  the  whole  world  liter- 
ature. 

120 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  121 

That,  I  admit,  is  a  rather  tremendous  prop- 
osition. Are  we  to  contemplate  the  prospect  of 
a  modern  Bible  in  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  vol- 
umes? Such  a  vast  Bible  would  defeat  its  own 
end.  We  want  a  Bible  that  everyone  will  know, 
which  will  be  grasped  by  the  mind  of  everyone. 
That  is  essential  to  our  idea  of  a  Bible  as  a  social 
cement. 

Fortunately,  our  model  Bible,  as  we  have  it 
to-day,  gives  us  a  lead  in  this  matter.  Its  contents 
are  classified.  We  have  first  of  all  the  canonical 
books,  which  are  treated  as  the  vitally  important 
books;  they  are  the  books,  to  quote  the  phrase 
used  in  the  English  prayer  book,  which  are 
''necessary  to  salvation."  And  then  we  have  a 
collection  of  other  books,  the  Apocrypha,  the 
books  set  aside,  books  often  admirable  and  beauti- 
ful, but  not  essential,  good  to  be  read  for  "ex- 
ample of  life  and  instruction  of  manners,' '  yet 
books  that  everyone  need  not  read  and  know.  Let 
us  take  this  lead  and  let  us  ask  whether  we  can — 
with  the  whole  accumulated  literature  of  the  world 
as  our  material — select  a  bookful  or  so  of  matter, 
of  such  exceptional  value  that  it  would  be  well  for 
all  mankind  to  read  it  and  know  it.  This  will  be 
our  equivalent  for  the  canonical  books.  I  will 
return  to  that  in  a  moment. 

And  outside  this  canonical  book  or  books, 
shall  we  leave  all  the  rest  of  literature  in  a  limit- 
less Apocrypha!  I  am  doubtful  about  that.  I 
would  suggest  that  we  make  a  second  intermediate 
class  between  the  canonical  books  that  everyone 


122       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

in  our  civilization  ought  to  read  and  the  outer 
Apocrypha  that  you  may  read  or  not  as  you 
choose.  This  intermediate  class  I  would  call  the 
Great  Books  of  the  World.  It  would  not  be  a  part 
of  our  Bible,  but  it  would  come  next  to  our  Bible. 
It  would  not  be  what  one  must  read  but  only  what 
it  is  desirable  the  people  should  read. 

Now  this  canonical  literature  we  are  discussing 
is  to  be  the  third  vital  part  of  our  modern  Bible. 
I  conceive  of  it  as  something  that  would  go  into  the 
hands  of  every  man  and  woman  in  that  coming 
great  civilization  which  is  the  dream  of  our  race. 
Together  with  the  Book  of  World  History  and  the 
Book  of  Law  and  Eighteousness  and  Wisdom  that 
I  have  sketched  out  to  you,  and  another  Book  of 
which  I  shall  have  something  to  say  later,  this 
Canonical  Literature  will  constitute  the  intellec- 
tual and  moral  cement  of  the  World  Society,  that 
intellectual  and  moral  cement  for  the  want  of 
which  our  world  falls  into  political  and  social  con- 
fusion and  disaster  to-day.  Upon  such  a  basis, 
upon  a  common  body  of  ideas,  a  common  moral 
teaching  and  the  world-wide  assimilation  of  the 
same  emotional  and  aesthetic  material,  it  may  still 
Jbe  possible  to  build  up  humanity  into  one  co-opera- 
tive various  and  understanding  community. 

Now  if  we  bear  this  idea  of  a  cementing  func- 
tion firmly  in  mind,  we  shall  have  a  criterion  by 
which  to  judge  what  shall  be  omitted  from  and 
what  shall  be  included  in  the  Books  of  Literature 
in  this  modern  Bible  of  ours.  We  shall  begin,  of 
course,  by  levying  toll  upon  the  Old  and  New 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  123 

Testaments.  I  do  not  think  I  need  justify  that 
step.  I  suppose  that  there  will  be  no  doubt  vof  the 
inclusion  of  many  of  the  Psalms — but  I  question  if 
we  should  include  them  all — and  of  a  number  of 
splendid  passages  from  the  Prophets.  Should  we 
include  the  Song  of  Songs  ?  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  compilers  of  a  new  Bible  would  hesitate  at 
that.  Should  we  include  the  Book  of  Job?  That  I 
think  would  be  a  very  difficult  question  indeed  for 
our  compilers.  The  Book  of  Job  is  a  very  wonder- 
ful and  beautiful  discussion  of  the  profound  prob- 
lem of  evil  in  the  world.  It  is  a  tremendous  exer- 
cise to  read  and  understand,  but  is  it  universally 
necessary?  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  the  Book 
of  Job,  possibly  with  the  illustrations  of  Blake, 
would  not  make  a  part  of  our  Canon  but  would 
rank  among  our  Great  Books.  It  is  a  part  of  a 
very  large  literature  of  discussion,  of  which  I  shall 
have  more  to  say  in  a  moment.  So  too  I  question 
if  we  should  make  the  story  of  Euth  or  the  story 
of  Esther  fundamental  teaching  for  our  world 
civilization.  Daniel,  again,  I  imagine  relegated  to 
the  Apocrypha.    But  to  this  I  will  return  later. 

The  story  of  the  Gospels  would,  of  course,  have 
been  incorporated  in  our  Historical  Book,  but  in 
addition  as  part  of  our  first  canon,  each  of  the 
four  gospels— with  the  possible  omission  of  the 
genealogies— would  have  a  place,  for  the  sake  of 
their  matchless  directness,  simplicity  and  beauty. 
They  give  a  picture,  they  convey  an  atmosphere  of 
supreme  value  to  us  all,  incommunicable  in  any 
other  form  or  language.    Again  there  is  a  great 


124       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

wealth  of  material  in  the  Epistles.  It  is,  for 
example,  inconceivable  that  such  a  passage  as  that 
of  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians— ' ' Though 
I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels  and 
have  not  charity  I  am  become  as  sounding  brass  or 
a  tinkling  cymbal" — the  whole  of  that  wonderful 
chapter — should  ever  pass  out  of  the  common  heri- 
tage of  mankind. 

So  much  from  the  Ancient  Bible  for  our  modern 
Bible,  all  its  inspiration  and  beauty  and  fire.  And 
now  what  else? 

Speaking  in  English  to  an  English-speaking 
audience  one  name  comes  close  upon  the  Bible, 
Shakespeare.  What  are  we  going  to  do  about 
Shakespeare!  If  you  were  to  waylay  almost  any 
Englishman  or  American  and  put  this  project  of 
a  modern  Bible  before  him,  and  then  begin  your 
list  of  ingredients  with  the  Bible  and  the  whole  of 
Shakespeare,  he  would  almost  certainly  say,  "  Yes, 
yes." 

But  would  he  be  right? 

On  reflection  he  might  perhaps  recede  and  say, 
"Not  the  whole  of  Shakespeare,"  but  well,  "Ham- 
let," "The  Tempest,"  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  "The 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream."  But  even  these! 
Are  they  "generally  necessary  to  salvation"?  We 
run  our  minds  through  the  treasures  of  Shakes- 
peare as  we  might  run  our  fingers  through  the 
contents  of  a  box  of  very  precious  and  beautiful 
jewels-— before  equipping  a  youth  for  battle. 

No.  These  things  are  for  ornament  and  joy. 
I  doubt  if  we  could  have  a  single  play — a  single 


M 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  125 

scene  of  Shakespeare's  in  our  Canon.  He  goes 
altogether  into  the  Great  Books,  all  of  hiiri;  he 
joins  the  aristocracy  of  the  Apocrypha.  And,  I  be- 
lieve, nearly  all  the  great  plays  of  the  world  would 
have  to  join  him  there.  Euripides  and  Sophocles, 
Schiller  and  Ibsen.  Perhaps  some  speeches  and 
such-like  passages  might  be  quoted  in  the  Canon, 
but  that  is  all. 

Our  Canon,  remember,  is  to  be  the  essential 
cementing  stuff  of  our  community  and  nothing 
more.  If  once  we  admit  merely  beautiful  and  de- 
lightful things,  then  I  see  an  overwhelming  inrush 
of  jewels  and  flowers.  If  we  admit,  "The  Midsum- 
mer Night's  Dream/ '  then  I  must  insist  that  we 
also  admit  such  lovely  nonsense  as 

In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 

A  stately  pleasure  dome  decree 
Where  Alph  the  sacred  river  ran 
Through  caverns  measureless  to  man 
Down  to  a  sunless  sea.  .  .  . 

Our  Canon  I  am  afraid  cannot  take  in  such 
things,  and  with  the  plays  we  must  banish  also  all 
the  novels;  the  greater  books  of  such  writers  as 
Cervantes,  Defoe,  Dickens,  Fielding,  Tolstoi, 
Hardy,  Hamsun,  that  great  succession  of  writers 
— they  are  all  good  for  "example  of  life  and  in- 
struction of  manners, "  and  to  the  Apocrypha 
they  must  go.  And  so  it  is  that  since  I  would 
banish  " Romeo  and  Juliet,' '  I  would  also  banish 
the  Song  of  Songs,  and  since  I  must  put  away 
1 < Vanity  Fair''  and  the  "Shabby  Genteel  Story," 


126       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

I  would  also  put  away  Esther  and  Ruth.  And  I  find 
myself  most  reluctant  to  exclude  not  any  novels 
written  in  English,  but  one  or  two  great  sweeping 
books  by  non-English  writers.  It  seems  to  me  that 
Tolstoi's  "War  and  Peace' '  and  Hamsun's 
"Growth  of  the  Soil"  are  books  on  an  almost 
Biblical  scale,  that  they  deal  with  life  so  greatly  as 
to  come  nearest  to  the  idea  of  a  universally  in- 
spiring and  illuminating  literature  which  under- 
lies the  idea  of  our  Canon.  If  we  put  any  whole 
novels  into  the  Canon  I  would  plead  for  these. 
But  I  will  not  plead  now  even  for  these.  I  do  not 
think  any  novels  at  all  can  go  into  our  modern 
Bible,  as  whole  works.  The  possibility  of  long  pas- 
sages going  in  is,  of  course,  quite  a  different 
matter. 

And  passing  now  from  great  plays  and  great 
novels  and  romances,  we  come  to  the  still  more 
difficult  problem  of  great  philosophical  and  critical 
works.  Take  "Gulliver's  Travels,"  an  intense, 
dark,  stirring  criticism  of  life  and  social  order — 
and  the  "Dialogues  of  Plato,"  full  of  light  and  in- 
spiration. In  these  latter  we  might  quarry  for 
beautiful  passages  for  our  Canon,  but  I  do  not 
think  we  could  take  them  in  as  wholes,  and  if  we 
do  not  take  them  in  as  complete  books,  then  I  think 
that  Semitic  parallel  to  these  Greek  dialogues, 
The  Booh  of  Job,  must  stand  not  in  our  Canon,  but 
in  the  Great  Book  section  of  our  Apocrypha. 

And  next  we  have  to  consider  all  the  great  Epics 
in  the  world.  There  again  I  am  for  exclusion.  This 
Bible  we   are  considering  must  be   universally 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  127 

available.  If  it  is  too  bulky  for  universal  use  it 
loses  its  primary  function  of  a  moral  cement.  We 
cannot  include  the  "Iliad,"  the  Norse  Sagas,  the 
"iEneid,"  or  "Paradise  Lost"  in  our  Canon.  Let 
them  swell  the  great  sack  of  our  Apocrypha,  and 
let  the  children  read  them  if  they  will. 

When  one  glances  in  this  fashion  over  the  ac- 
cumulated literary  resources  of  mankind  it  be- 
comes plain  that  our  canonical  books  of  literature 
in  this  modern  Bible  of  ours  can  be  little  more  than 
an  Anthology  or  a  group  of  Anthologies.  Per- 
haps they  might  be  gathered  under  separate  heads, 
as  the  "Book  of  Freedom,"  the  "Book  of  Jus- 
tice," the  "Book  of  Charity."  And  now  having 
done  nothing  as  yet  but  reject,  let  me  begin  to  ac- 
cept. Let  me  quote  a  few  samples  of  the  kind  of 
thing  that  I  imagine  would  best  serve  the  purpose 
of  our  Bible  and  that  should  certainly  be  included. 

Here  are  words  that  every  American  knows 
by  heart  already — I  would  like  every  man  in  the 
world  to  know  them  by  heart  and  to  repeat  them. 
It  is  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address  and  I  will  not 
spare  you  a  word  of  it : 

"Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago  our  fathers 
brought  forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation,  con- 
ceived in  liberty,  and  dedicated  to  the  proposi- 
tion that  all  men  are  created  equal.  Now  we  are 
engaged  in  a  great  civil  war,  testing  whether  that 
nation,  or  any  nation  so  conceived  and  so  dedi- 
cated, can  long  endure.  We  are  met  on  a  great 
battlefield  of  that  war.    We  have  come  to  dedi- 


128      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

oate  a  portion  of  that  field,  as  a  final  resting-place 
for  those  who  here  gave  their  lives  that  that  nation 
might  live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that 
we  should  do  this.  But  in  a  larger  sense,  we  can- 
not dedicate — we  cannot  consecrate — we  cannot 
hallow — this  ground.  The  brave  men,  living  and 
dead,  who  struggled  here,  have  consecrated  it,  far 
above  our  poor  power  to  add  or  detract.  The 
world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remember  what  we 
say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did 
here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather,  to  be  dedi- 
cated here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they  who 
fought  here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It 
is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedicated  to  the  great 
task  remaining  before  us — that  from  these  hon- 
ored dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that  cause 
for  which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  de- 
votion. That  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these 
dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain — that  this  nation, 
under  God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom — 
and  that  Government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth.' ' 

And  here  is  something  that  might  perhaps  make 
another  short  chapter  in  the  same  Book  of  Free- 
dom— but  it  deals  with  Freedom  of  a  different 
sort: 

Out  of  the  night  that  covers  me 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole, 

I  thank  whatever  gods  may  be 
For  my  unconquerable  soul. 

In  the  fell  clutch  of  circumstance 


THE' BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  129 

I  have  not  winced  nor  cried  aloud, 
Under  the  bludgeonings  of  Chance, 
My  head  is  bloody  but  unbowed. 

Beyond  this  Place  of  wrath  and  tears, 

Looms  but  the  Horror  of  the  Shade, 
And  yet  the  Menace  of  the  years 

Finds  and  shall  find  me  Unafraid. 
It  matters  not  how  strait  the  gate, 

How  charged  with  punishments  the  scroll, 
I  am  the  Master  of  my  Fate, 

I  am  the  Captain  of  my  Soul. 

That,  as  you  know  was  Henley's,  and  as  I 
turned  up  his  volume  of  poems  to  copy  out  that 
poem  I  came  again  on  these  familiar  lines: 

The  ways  of  Death  are  soothing?  and  serene, 
And  all  the  words  of  Death  are  grave  and  sweet, 
From  camp  and  church,  the  fireside  and  the  street, 

She  beckons  forth — and  strife  and  song  have  been. 

A  summer's  night  descending  cool  and  green, 
And  dark  on  daytime's  dust  and  stress  and  heat, 

The  ways  of  Death  are  soothing  and  serene, 
And  all  the  words  of  Death  are  grave  and  sweet. 

There  seems  something  in  that  also  which  I 
could  spare  only  very  reluctantly  from  a  new  Bible 
in  the  world.  Yet  I  tender  those  lines  very  doubt- 
fully. For  I  am  not  a  very  cultivated  and  well- 
read  person,  and  note  only  the  things  that  have 
struck  upon  my  mind ;  but  I  quite  understand  that 
there  must  be  many  things  of  the  same  sort,  but 
better,  that  I  have  never  encountered,  or  that  I 


130      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

have  not  heard  or  read  under  circumstances  that 
were  favourable  to  their  proper  appreciation.  I 
would  rather  say  about  what  I  am  quoting  in  this 
section,  not  positively  "this  thing,"  but  merely 
"this  sort  of  thing.' ' 

And  in  the  vein  of  "this  sort  of  thing"  let  me 
quote  you — again  for  the  Book  of  Freedom — a 
passage  from  Milton,  defending  the  ancient  Eng- 
lish tradition  of  free  speech  and  free  decision  and 
praising  London  and  England.  This  London  and 
England  of  which  he  boasts  have  broadened  out 
as  the  idea  of  Jerusalem  has  broadened  out,  to 
world-wide  comprehensions.  Let  no  false  modesty 
blind  us  to  our  great  tradition ;  you  and  I  are  still 
thinking  in  Milton's  city;  we  continue,  however 
unworthily,  the  great  inheritance  of  .the  world- 
wide responsibility  and  service,  of  His  English- 
men.   Here  is  my  passage : 

"Now  once  again  by  all  concurrence  of  signs, 
and  by  the  general  instinct  of  holy  and  devout 
men,  as  they  daily  and  solemnly  express  their 
thoughts,  God  is  decreeing  to  begin  some  new  and 
great  period  in  His  Church,  even  to  the  reforming 
of  reformation  itself ;  what  does  He  then  but  reveal 
Himself  to  His  servants,  and  as  His  manner  is, 
first  to  His  Englishmen?  I  say,  as  His  manner 
is,  first  to  us,  though  we  mark  not  the  method  of 
His  counsels,  and  are  unworthy.  Behold  now  this 
vast  city,  a  city  of  refuge,  the  mansion-house  of 
liberty,  encompassed  and  surrounded  with  His 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  131 

protection ;  the  shop  of  war  hath  not  there  more 
anvils  and  hammers  working,  to  fashion  out  the 
plates  and  instruments  of  armed  justice  in  defence 
of  beleaguered  truth,  than  there  be  pens  and  heads 
there,  sitting  by  their  studious  lamps,  musing, 
searching,  revolving  new  notions  and  ideas  where- 
with to  present,  as  with  their  homage  and  their 
fealty,  the  approaching  reformation:  others  as 
fast  reading,  trying  all  things,  assenting  to  the 
force  of  reason  and  convincement. 

1 i  What  could  a  man  require  more  from  a  na- 
tion so  pliant  and  so  prone  to  seek  after  know- 
ledge ?  What  wants  there  to  such  a  towardly  and 
pregnant  soil,  but  wise  and  faithful  labourers,  to 
make  a  knowing  people,  a  nation  of  prophets,  of 
sages,  and  of  worthies  f  We  reckon  more  than  five 
months  yet  to  harvest;  there  need  not  be  five 
weeks,  had  we  but  eyes  to  lift  up,  the  fields  are 
white  already.  Where  there  is  much  desire  to 
learn,  there  of  necessity  will  be  much  arguing, 
much  writing,  many  opinions ;  for  opinion  in  good 
men  is  but  knowledge  in  the  making.  Under  these 
fantastic  terrors  of  sect  and  schism,  we  wrong  the 
earnest  and  zealous  thirst  after  knowledge  and 
understanding,  which  God  hath  stirred  up  in  this 
city.  What  some  lament  of,  we  rather  should  re- 
joice at,  should  rather  praise  this  pious  forward- 
ness among  men,  to  reassume  the  ill-deputed  care 
of  their  religion  into  their  own  hands  again.  A 
little  generous  prudence,  a  little  forbearance  of 
one  another,  and  some  grain  of  charity  might  win 


132      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

all  these  diligencies  to  join  and  unite  into  one  gen- 
eral and  brotherly  search  after  truth ;  could  we  but 
forego  this  prelatical  tradition  of  crowding  free 
consciences  and  Christian  liberties  into  canons  and 
precepts  of  men.  I  doubt  not,  if  some  great  and 
worthy  stranger  should  come  among  us,  wise  to 
discern  the  mould  and  temper  of  a  people,  and 
how  to  govern  it,  observing  the  high  hopes  and 
aims,  the  diligent  alacrity  of  our  extended 
thoughts  and  reasonings  in  the  pursuance  of  truth 
and  freedom,  but  that  he  would  cry  out  as  Pyrrhus 
did,  admiring  the  Eoman  docility  and  courage :  '  If 
such  were  my  Epirots,  I  would  not  despair  the 
greatest  design  that  could  be  attempted  to  make  a 
church  or  kingdom  happy.' 

"Yet  these  are  the  men  cried  out  against  for 
schismatics  and  sectaries,  as  if,  while  the  temple  of 
the  Lord  was  building,  some  cutting,  some  squar- 
ing the  marble,  others  hewing  the  cedars,  there 
should  be  a  sort  of  irrational  men,  who  could  not 
consider  there  must  be  many  schisms  and  many 
dissections  made  in  the  quarry  and  in  the  timber 
ere  the  house  of  God  can  be  built.  And  when  every 
stone  is  laid  artfully  together,  it  cannot  be  united 
into  a  continuity,  it  can  but  be  contiguous  in  this 
world :  neither  can  every  piece  of  the  bu:lding  be 
of  one  form ;  nay,  rather  the  perfection  consists  in 
this,  that  out  of  many  moderate  varieties  and 
brotherly  dissimilitudes  that  are  not  vastly  dis- 
proportional,  arises  the  goodly  and  the  graceful 
symmetry  that  commends  the  whole  pile  and  struc- 
ture." 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  133 

But  I  will  not  go  on  turning  over  the  pages  of 
books  and  reciting  prose  and  poetry  to  you.  I 
cannot  even  begin  to  remind  you  of  the  immense 
treasure  of  noble  and  ennobling  prose  and  verse 
that  this  world  has  accumulated  in  the  past  three 
thousand  years.  Not  one  soul  in  ten  thousand  that 
is  born  into  this  world  even  tastes  from  that 
store.  For  most  of  mankind  now  that  treasure  is 
as  if  it  had  never  been.  Is  it  too  much  to  sug- 
gest that  we  should  make  some  organized  attempt 
to  gather  up  the  quintessence  of  literature  now, 
and  make  it  accessible  to  the  masses  of  our  race? 
"Why  should  we  not  on  a  large  scale  with  a  certain 
breadth  and  dignity  set  about  compiling  the  Poetic 
Books,  the  Books  of  Inspiration  for  a  renewed 
Bible,  for  a  Bible  of  Civilization?  It  seems  to 
me  that  such  a  Book  made  universally  accessible, 
made  a  basis  of  teaching  everywhere,  could  set 
the  key  of  the  whole  world's  thought. 


§4 

There  remains  one  other  element  if  we  are  to 
complete  the  parallelism  of  the  old  Bible  and  the 
new.  The  Christian  Bible  ends  with  a  forecast, 
the  Book  of  Kevelation;  the  Hebrew  Bible  ended 
also  with  forecasts,  the  Prophets.  To  that  the  old 
Bible  owed  much  of  its  magic  power  over  men's 
imaginations  and  the  inspiration  it  gave  them.  It 
was  not  a  dead  record,  not  an  accumulation  of 
things  finished  and  of  songs  sung.  It  pointed 
steadily  and  plainly  to  the  Days  to  Come  as  the 
end  and  explanation  of  all  that  went  before.  So, 
too,  our  modern  Bible,  if  it  is  to  hold  and  rule  the 
imagination  of  men,  must  close,  I  think,  with  a 
Book  of  Forecasts. 

We  want  to  make  our  world  think  more  than  it 
does  about  the  consequences  of  the  lives  it  leads 
and  the  political  deeds  that  it  does  and  that  it 
permits  to  be  done.  We  want  to  turn  the  human 
imagination  round  again  towards  the  future  which 
our  lives  create.  We  want  a  collection  and  digest 
of  forecasts  and  warnings  to  complete  this  modern 
Bible  of  ours.  Now  here  I  think  you  will  say — and 
I  admit  with  perfect  reason — that  I  am  floating 
away  from  any  reasonable  possibility  at  all.  How 
can  we  have  forecasts  and  prophecies  of  things 
that  are  happening  now?  Well,  I  will  make  a  clean 

134 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  135 

breast  of  it,  and  admit  that  I  am  asking  for  some- 
thing that  may  be  impossible.  Nevertheless  it  is 
something  that  is  very  necessary  if  men  are  to 
remain  indeed  intelligent  co-operating  communi- 
ties. In  the  past  you  will  find  where  there  have 
been  orderly  and  successful  communities  the  men 
in  them  had  an  idea  of  a  Destiny,  of  some  object, 
something  that  would  amount  to  a  criterion  and 
judgment  upon  their  collective  conduct.  Well,  I 
believe  that  we  have  to  get  back  to  something  of 
that  sort. 

We  have  statesmen  and  politicians  who  profess 
to  guide  our  destinies.  Whither  are  they  guiding 
our  destinies? 

Surely  they  have  some  idea.  The  great  Ameri- 
can statesmen  and  the  great  European  statesmen 
are  making  To-morrow.  What  is  the  To-morrow 
they  are  making? 

They  must  have  some  idea  of  it.  Otherwise  they 
must  be  imposters.  I  am  loth  to  believe  them 
imposters,  mere  adventurers  who  have  blundered 
into  positions  of  power  and  honour  with  no  idea  of 
what  they  are  doing  to  the  world.  But  if  they 
have  an  idea  of  what  they  are  doing  to  the  world, 
they  foresee  and  intend  a  Future.  That,  I  take 
it,  is  sound  reasoning  and  the  inference  is  plain. 

They  ought  to  write  down  their  ideas  of  this 
Future  before  us.  It  would  be  helpful  to  all  of 
us.  It  might  be  a  very  helpful  exercise  for  them. 
It  is,  I  think,  reasonable  for  Americans  to  ask  the 
great  political  personages  of  America,  the  presi- 
dent and  so  forth,  for  example :  whether  they  think 


136      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

the  United  States  will  stand  alone  in  twenty-five 
years '  time  as  they  stand  alone  now  ?  Or  whether 
they  think  that  there  will  be  a  greater  United 
States — of  all  America — or  of  all  the  world? 
They  must  know  their  own  will  about  that.  And 
it  is  equally  reasonable  to  ask  the  great  political 
personages  of  the  British  Empire :  what  will  Ire- 
land be  in  twenty-five  years'  time?  What  will 
India  be?  There  must  be  a  plan,  an  intended 
thing.  Otherwise  these  men  have  no  intentions; 
otherwise  they  must  be,  in  two  words,  dangerous 
fools.  The  sooner  we  substitute  a  type  of  man 
with  a  sufficient  foresight  and  capable  of  articu- 
late speech  in  the  matter,  the  better  for  our  race. 

And  again  every  statesman  and  every  politician 
throughout  the  world  says  that  the  relations  of 
industrial  enterprise  to  the  labour  it  employs  are 
unsatisfactory.  Yes.  But  how  are  those  relations 
going  to  develop?  How  do  they  mean  them  to  de- 
velop? 

Are  we  just  drifting  into  an  unknown  darkness 
in  all  these  matters  with  blind  leaders  of  our  blind- 
ness? Or  cannot  a  lot  of  these  things  be  figured 
out  by  able  and  intelligent  people  ?  I  put  it  to  you 
that  they  can.  That  it  is  a  reasonable  and  proper 
thing  to  ask  our  statesmen  and  politicians :  what 
is  going  to  happen  to  the  world?  What  sort  of 
better  social  order  are  you  making  for?  What 
sort  of  world  order  are  you  creating?  Let  them 
open  their  minds  to  us,  let  them  put  upon  per- 
manent record  the  significance  of  all  their  in- 
trigues and  manoeuvres.    Then  as  they  go  on  we 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  137 

can  check  their  capacity  and  good  faith.  We  can 
establish  a  control  at  last  that  will  rule  presidents 
and  kings. 

Now  the  answer  to  these  questions  for  states- 
men is  what  I  mean  by  a  Booh  of  Forecasts.  Such 
a  book  I  believe  is  urgently  needed  to  help  our 
civilization.  It  is  a  book  we  ought  all  to  pos- 
sess and  read.  I  know  you  will  say  that  such  a 
Booh  of  Forecasts  will  be  at  first  a  preposterously 
insufficient  book — that  every  year  will  show  it  up 
and  make  it  more  absurd.  I  quite  agree.  The 
first  Booh  of  Forecasts  will  be  a  poor  thing.  Mis- 
erably poor.  So  poor  that  people  will  presently 
clamour  to  have  it  thoroughly  revised. 

The  revised  Booh  of  Forecasts  will  not  be  quite 
so  bad.  It  will  have  been  tested  against  realities. 
It  will  form  the  basis  of  a  vast  amount  of  criticism 
and  discussion. 

When  again  it  comes  to  be  revised,  it  will  be 
much  nearer  possible  realities. 

I  put  it  to  you  that  the  psychology,  the  men- 
tality of  a  community  that  has  &Book  of  Forecasts 
in  hand  and  under  watchful  revision  will  be  alto- 
gether steadier  and  stronger  and  clearer  than 
that  of  a  community  which  lives  as  we  do  to-day, 
mere  adventurers,  without  foresight,  in  a  world 
of  catastrophes  and  accidents  and  unexpected 
things.  We  shall  be  living  again  in  a  plan.  Our 
lives  will  be  shaped  to  certain  defined  ends.  We 
shall  fall  into  place  in  a  great  scheme  of  activities. 
We  shall  recover  again  some  or  all  of  the  stead- 
fastness and  dignity  of  the  old  religious  life. 


§5 

Let  me  with  this  Booh  of  Forecasts  round  off 
my  fantasy.  I  would  picture  to  you  this  modern 
Bible,  perhaps  two  or  three  times  as  bulky  as  the 
old  Bible,  and  consisting  first  of 

The  Historical  Books  with  maps  and  the  like ; 

The  Books  of  Conduct  and  Wisdom; 

The  Anthologies  of  Poetry  and  Literature; 
and  finally,  the 

Book  of  Forecasts,  taking  the  place  of  the 
Prophets  and  Eevelations. 

I  would  picture  this  revivified  Bible  to  you  as 
most  carefully  done  and  printed  and  made  ac- 
cessible to  all,  the  basis  of  education  in  every 
school,  the  common  platform  of  all  discussion — 
just  as  in  the  past  the  old  Bible  used  to  be.  I 
would  ask  you  to  imagine  it  translated  into  every 
language,  a  common  material  of  understanding 
throughout  all  the  world. 

And  furthermore,  I  imagine  something  else 
about  this — quite  unlike  the  old  Bible — I  imagine 
all  of  it  periodically  revised.  The  historical  books 
would  need  to  be  revised  and  brought  up  to  date, 
there  would  be  new  lights  on  health  and  conduct, 
there  would  be  fresh  additions  to  the  anthologies, 
and  there  would  be  Forecasts  that  would  have  to 
be    struck   out   because   they   were   realized   or 

138 


THE  BIBLE  OF  CIVILIZATION  139 

because  they  were  shown  to  be  hopeless  or  un- 
desirable, and  fresh  Forecasts  would  be  added  to 
replace  them.  It  would  be  a  Bible  moving  for- 
ward and  changing  and  gaining  with  human  ex- 
perience and  human  destiny.  .  .  . 

Well,  that  is  my  dream  of  a  Bible  of  Civiliza- 
tion. Have  I  in  any  way  carried  my  vision  out 
to  you  of  this  little  row  of  four  or  five  volumes  in 
every  house,  in  every  life,  throughout  the  world, 
holding  the  lives  and  ideas  and  imaginations  of 
men  together  in  a  net  of  common  familiar  phrases 
and  common  established  hopes  1 

And  is  this  a  mere  fantastic  talk,  or  is  this  a 
thing  that  could  be  done  and  that  ought  to  be  done? 

I  do  not  know  how  it  will  appear  to  you,  but 
to  me  it  seems  that  this  book  I  have  been  talking 
about,  the  Bible  of  to-day's  civilization,  is  not 
simply  a  conceivable  possibility,  it  is  a  great  and 
urgent  need.  Our  education  is,  I  think,  pointless 
without  it,  a  shell  without  a  core.  Our  social  life 
is  aimless  without  it,  we  are  a  crowd  without  a 
common  understanding.  Only  by  means  of  some 
such  unifying  instrument,  I  believe,  can  we  hope 
to  lift  human  life  out  of  its  present  dangerous  drift 
towards  confusion  and  disaster. 

It  is,  I  think  therefore,  an  urgently  desirable 
undertaking. 

It  is  also  a  very  practicable  one.  The  creation 
of  such  a  Bible,  its  printing  and  its  translation, 
and  a  propaganda  that  would  carry  it  into  the 
homes  and  schools  of  most  of  the  world,  could  I 
think  all  be  achieved  by  a  few  hundred  resolute 


140      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

and  capable  people  at  a  cost  of  thirty  or  forty  mil- 
lion dollars.  That  is  a  less  sum  than  that  the 
United  States — in  a  time  when  they  have  no  enemy 
to  fear  in  all  the  world — are  prepared  to  spend 
upon  the  building  of  what  is  for  them  ?n  entirely 
superfluous  and  extravagant  toy,  a  great  navy. 

You  may,  you  probably  will,  differ  very  widely 
upon  much  that  I  have  here  put  before  you.  Let 
me  ask  you  not  to  let  any  of  the  details  of  my 
sketching  set  you  against  the  fundamental  idea, 
that  old  creative  idea  of  the  Bohemian  education- 
ist who  was  the  pupil  of  Bacon  and  the  friend  of 
Milton,  the  idea  of  Komensky,  the  idea  of  creating 
and  using  a  common  book,  a  book  of  knowledge 
and  wisdom,  as  the  necessary  foundation  for  any 
enduring  human  unanimity. 


VI 

THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WOULD 

And  now  I  am  going  on  to  a  review  of  the  broad 
facts  of  the  educational  organization  of  our  pres- 
ent world. 

I  am  myself  a  very  undereducated  person.  It 
is  a  constant  trouble  to  me.  Like  seeks  like  in 
this  world.  I  propose  to  ask  the  question  whether 
the  whole  world  is  not  undereducated,  and  I  warn 
you  in  advance  that  I  am  going  to  answer  in  the 
affirmative. 

I  am  going  to  discuss  the  possibility  of  raising 
the  general  educational  level  very  considerably, 
and  I  am  going  to  consider  what  such  a  raising  of 
the  educational  level  would  mean  in  human  life. 

I  propose  to  adopt  rather  a  vulgar,  businesslike 
tone  about  all  this.  I  am  going  to  apply  to  the 
human  community  much  the  same  sort  of  tests 
that  a  manufacturer  applies  to  his  factory.  His 
factory  has  some  distinctive  product,  and  when  he 
looks  into  his  affairs  he  tries  to  find  out  whether 
he  gets  the  best  possible  quality  of  the  product, 
whether  he  gets  it  as  efficiently  and  inexpensively 
as  possible,  and  constantly  how  he  can  improve  his 
factory  and  his  processes  in  all  these  matters. 

Now  the  human  community  may  be  regarded  as 

141 


142       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

a  concern  engaged  in  the  production  of  human 
life.  And  it  may  be  judged  very  largely  by  the 
question  whether  the  human  life  it  produces  is 
abundant  and  full  and  intense  and  beautiful. 

Most  of  the  tests  that  we  apply  to  a  state  or 
a  city  or  a  period  or  a  nation  resolve  themselves, 
you  will  find,  into  these  questions : — 

What  was  the  life  it  produced? 

What  is  the  life  it  produces? 

Now  I  will  further  assume  that  as  yet  the  com- 
munity has  little  or  no  control  over  the  raw  prod- 
uct, over  the  life,  that  is  to  say,  that  comes  into 
it.  I  admit  that  from  at  least  the  time  of  Plato 
onward  the  possibility  has  been  discussed  of 
breeding  human  beings  as  we  do  horses  and  dogs. 
There  is  an  enormous  amount  of  what  is  called 
eugenic  literature  and  discussion  to-day.  But  I 
will  set  all  that  sort  of  thing  aside  from  our  pres- 
ent discussion  because  I  do  not  think  anything  of 
the  kind  is  practicable  at  the  present  time. 

Quite  apart  from  any  other  considerations,  one 
has  to  remember  one  entire  difference  between  the 
possible  breeding  of  human  beings  and  the  actual 
breeding  of  dogs  and  horses.  We  breed  dogs  and 
horses  for  uniformity,  for  certain  very  limited 
specified  points — speed,  scent  and  the  like.  But 
human  beings  we  should  have  to  breed  for  variety : 
we  cannot  specify  any  particular  points  we  want. 
We  want  statesmen  and  poets  and  musicians  and 
philosophers  and  swift  men  and  strong  men  and 
delicate  men  and  brave  men.  The  qualities  of 
one  would  be  the  weaknesses  of  another. 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        143 

It  is  really  a  false  analogy,  that  between  the 
breeding  of  men  and  the  breeding  of  horses  and 
dogs.  In  the  case  of  human  beings  we  want  much 
more  subtle  and  delicate  combinations  of  qualities. 
For  any  practical  purposes  we  do  not  know  what 
we  want  nor  do  we  know  how  to  get  it.  So  let  us 
rule  that  theme  out  of  our  present  discussion 
altogether. 

And  I  also  propose  to  rule  out  another  set  of 
topics  from  this  discussion — simply  because  if  we 
don't  do  so  we  shali  have  more  matter  than  we 
can  handle  conveniently  in  the  time  at  our  disposal. 
I  propose  to  leave  out  all  questions  of  health  and 
physical  welfare.  There  is,  as  you  know,  a  vast 
literature  now  in  existence,  concerned  with  the 
health  and  welfare  of  children  before  and  after 
birth,  concerned  with  infantile  life,  with  social 
conditions  and  social  work  directed  to  the  produc- 
tion of  a  vigorous  population.  I  am  going  to  as- 
sume here  that  all  that  sort  of  thing  is  seen  to 
— that  it  is  all  right,  that  somebody  is  doing  that, 
that  we  need  not  trouble  for  the  present  about  any 
of  those  things. 

This  leaves  us  with  the  mental  life  only  of  our 
community  and  its  individuals  to  consider.  On 
that  I  propose  to  concentrate  this  discussion. 

Now  the  human  mind  in  its  opening  stages  in 
a  civilized  community  passes  through  a  process 
which  may  best  be  named  as  schooling.  And  under 
schooling  I  would  include  not  only  the  sort  of 
things  that  we  do  to  a  prospective  citizen  in  the 
school  and  the  infant  school  but  also  anything  in 


144       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

the  nature  of  a  school-like  lesson  that  is  done  by 
the  mother  or  nurse  or  tutor  at  home,  or  by  play- 
mates and  companions  anywhere.  Out  of  this 
schooling  arises  the  general  mental  life.  It  is  the 
structural  ground-stuff  of  all  education  and 
thought. 

Now  what  is  this  schooling  to  do — what  is  it 
doing  to  the  new  human  being? 

Let  us  recall  what  our  own  schooling  was. 

It  fell  into  two  pretty  clearly  denned  parts. 
We  learnt  reading  and  writing,  we  made  a  certain 
study  of  grammar,  the  method  of  language,  per- 
haps we  learnt  the  beginnings  of  some  other  lan- 
guage than  our  own;  we  learnt  some  arithmetic 
and  perhaps  a  little  geometry  and  algebra ;  we  did 
some  drawing.  All  these  things  were  ways  of  ex- 
pression, means  of  expressing  ourselves,  means  of 
comprehending  our  thoughts  in  terms  of  other  peo- 
ple's minds,  and  of  understanding  the  expressions 
of  others.  That  was  the  basis  and  substance  of 
our  schooling;  a  training  in  mental  elucidation 
and  in  communication  with  other  minds.  But  also 
as  our  schooling  went  on  there  was  something 
more ;  we  learnt  a  little  history,  some  geography, 
the  beginnings  of  science.  This  second  part  of 
education  was  not  so  much  expression  as  wisdom. 
"We  learnt  what  was  generally  known  of  the  world 
about  us  and  of  its  past.  We  entered  into  the  com- 
mon knowledge  and  common  ideas  of  the  world. 

Now,  obviously,  this  schooling  is  merely  a  spe- 
cialization and  expansion  of  a  parental  function. 

In  the  primitive  ages  of  our  race  the  parent, 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        145 

and  particularly  the  mother,  out  of  an  instinctive 
impulse  and  practical  necessity,  restrained  and 
showed  and  taught,  and  the  child,  with  an  instinc- 
tive imitativeness  and  docility,  obeyed  and  learnt. 
And  as  the  primitive  family  grew  into  a  tribe,  as 
functions  specialized  and  the  range  of  knowledge 
widened,  this  primitive  schooling  by  the  mother 
was  supplemented  and  extended  by  the  showing 
of  things  by  companions  and  by  the  maxims  and 
initiations  of  old  men. 

It  was  only  with  the  development  of  early  civili- 
zations, as  the  mysteries  of  writing  and  reading 
began  to  be  important  in  life,  that  the  school,  qua 
school,  became  a  thing  in  itself.  And  as  the  com- 
munity expanded,  the  scope  of  instruction  ex- 
panded with  it.  Schooling  is,  in  fact,  and  always 
has  been,  the  expansion  and  development  of  the 
primitive  savage  mind,  which  is  still  all  that  we 
inherit,  to  adapt  it  to  the  needs  of  a  larger  com- 
munity. It  makes  out  of  the  savage  raw  material 
which  is  our  basal  mental  stuff,  a  citizen.  It  is  a 
necessary  process  of  fusion  if  a  civilized  commu- 
nity is  to  keep  in  being.  Without  at  least  a  net- 
work of  schooled  persons,  able  to  communicate  its 
common  ideas  and  act  in  intelligent  co-operation, 
no  community  beyond  a  mere  family  group  can 
ever  hold  together. 

As  the  human  community  expands,  therefore, 
the  range  of  schooling  must  expand  to  keep  pace 
with  it. 

I  want  to  base  my  enquiry  upon  that  proposi- 


146       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

tion.  If  it  is  sound,  certain  very  interesting  con- 
clusions follow. 

I  have  already  shown  in  the  preceding  discus- 
sions that  the  range  of  the  modern  state  has  in- 
creased at  least  ten  times  in  the  past  century,  and 
that  the  scale  of  our  community  of  intercourse  has 
increased  correspondingly.  I  want  now  to  ask  if 
there  has  been  any  corresponding  enlargement  of 
the  scope  of  the  schooling — either  of  the  commu- 
nity as  a  whole  or  of  any  special  governing  classes 
in  the  community — to  keep  pace  with  this  tremen- 
dous extension  of  range.  I  am  going  to  argue 
that  there  has  not  been  such  an  enlargement,  and 
that  a  large  factor  in  our  present  troubles  is  the 
failure  of  education  and  educational  method  to 
keep  pace  with  the  new  demands  made  upon  them. 

Now  I  will  first  ask  what  would  one  like  one's 
son  or  daughter  to  get  at  school  to  make  him  or 
her  a  full  living  citizen  of  this  modern  world.  And 
at  first  I  will  not  take  into  consideration  the  ques- 
tion of  expense  or  any  such  practical  difficulties. 
I  will  suppose  that  for  the  education  of  this  for- 
tunate young  citizen  whose  case  we  are  consider- 
ing we  have  limitless  means,  the  best  possible 
tutors,  the  best  apparatus  and  absolutely  the  most 
favourable  conditions.  The  only  limits  to  the 
teaching  of  this  young  citizen  are  his  or  her  own 
limitations.  We  suppose  a  pupil  of  fair  average 
intelligence  only. 

Now  first  we  shall  want  our  pupil  to  under- 
stand, speak,  read  and  write  the  mother  tongue 
well.    To  do  this  thoroughly  in  English  involves 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        147 

a  fairly  sound  knowledge  of  Latin  grammar  and 
at  least  some  slight  knowledge  of  the  elements  of 
Greek.  Latin  and  Greek,  which  are  disappearing 
as  distinct  and  separate  subjects  from  many 
school  curricula,  are  returning  as  necessary  parts 
of  the  English  course. 

But  nowadays  a  full  life  is  not  to  be  lived  with 
a  single  language.  The  world  becomes  polyglot. 
Even  if  we  do  not  want  to  live  among  foreigners, 
we  want  to  read  their  books  and  newspapers  and 
understand  and  follow  their  thought.  Few  of  us 
there  are  how  would  not  gladly  read  and  speak 
several  more  languages  if  we  had  the  chance  of 
doing  so.  I  would  therefore  set  down  as  a  desir- 
able part  of  this  ideal  education  we  are  planning, 
two  or  three  other  languages  in  addition  to  the 
mother  tongue  learnt  early  and  thoroughly.  These 
additional  languages  can  be  acquired  easily  if 
they  are  learnt  in  the  right  way.  The  easiest 
way  to  learn  a  language  is  to  learn  it  when  you  are 
quite  young.  Many  prosperous  people  in  Europe 
nowadays  contrive  to  bring  up  their  children  with 
two  or  three  foreign  languages,  by  employing  for- 
eign nurses  and  nursery  governesses  who  never 
speak  to  the  children  except  in  the  foreign  lan- 
guages. In  many  cases  what  is  known  as  the  alter- 
nate week  system  prevails.  The  governess  is 
Swiss  and  for  one  week  she  talks  nothing  but 
French  and  for  another  nothing  but  German.  In 
this  way  the  children  at  the  age  of  eight  or  nine 
can  be  made  to  talk  all  three  languages  with  a 
perfect  accent  and  an  easy  idiom. 


148      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

Now  if  this  can  be  done  for  some  children  it 
could  be  done  for  all  children — provided  we  could 
find  the  nurses  and  governesses  or  some  equiva- 
lent for  the  nurses  and  governesses,  and  if  we  can 
organize  the  business  efficiently.  That  point  I 
will  defer.  I  note  here  simply  that  the  thing  is 
possible,  if  not  practicable. 

Children,  however,  who  have  made  this  much 
start  with  languages  are  unable  in  England  and 
America,  at  least,  to  go  on  properly  with  the 
learning  of  languages  when  they  pass  into  a 
school.  Our  schools  are  so  badly  organized  that 
it  is  rare  to  find  even  French  well  taught,  and 
there  is  rarely  any  teaching  at  all  of  modern  lan- 
guages other  than  French  or  German.  Often  the 
two  foreign  languages  are  taught  by  different 
teachers  employing  different  methods,  and  both 
employing  a  different  grammatical  nomenclature 
from  that  used  in  studying  the  mother  tongue. 
The  classes  are  encumbered  with  belated  begin- 
ners. The  child  who  has  got  languages  from  its 
governess  therefore  marks  time — that  is  to  say, 
wastes  time  in  these  subjects  at  school.  The  child 
well  grounded  in  some  foreign  tongue  is  often  a 
source  of  irritation  to  the  teacher,  and  gets  into 
trouble  because  it  uses  idiomatic  expressions  with 
which  the  teacher  is  unfamiliar,  or  seems  to  reflect 
upon  the  teacher's  accent.  These  are  the  limita- 
tions of  the  school  and  not  the  limitations  of  the 
pupil.  Given  facilities,  there  is  no  reason  why 
there  should  not  be  a  rapid  expansion  of  the 
language  syllabus  at  thirteen  or  fourteen,  and  why 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        149 

language  generally  should  not  be  studied.  Some 
Slavonic  language  could  be  taken  up — Russian  or 
Czech — and  a  beginning  made  with  some  non- 
Aryan  tongue — Arabic,  for  example. 

The  object  of  language  teaching  in  a  civilized 
state  is  twofold:  to  give  a  thorough,  intimate, 
usable  knowledge  of  the  mother  tongue  and  of 
certain  key  languages.  But  if  teaching  were  sys- 
tematic and  no  time  were  wasted,  if  schooling 
joined  on  and  were  continuous  instead  of  being 
catastrophically  disconnected,  there  is  another 
side  of  language  teaching  altogether — now  en- 
tirely disregarded — and  that  is  the  acquisition  in 
skeleton  of  quite  a  number  of  languages  clustering 
round  the  key  languages.  If  at  the  end  of  his 
schooling  a  boy  knows  English,  French  and  Ger- 
man very  well  and  nothing  more,  he  is  still  a  help- 
less foreigner  in  relation  to  large  parts  of  the 
world.  But  if,  in  addition,  he  has  an  outline 
knowledge  of  Russian  and  Arabic  or  Turkish  or 
Hindustani — it  need  only  be  a  quite  bare  outline 
— and  if  he  has  had  a  term  or  so  of  Spanish  in 
relation  to  his  French,  or  Swedish  in  relation  to 
his  German,  then  he  has  the  key  in  his  hands  for 
almost  any  language  he  may  want.  If  he  has  not 
the  language  in  his  head,  he  has  it  very  conven- 
iently on  call — he  needs  but  a  sensible  conversa- 
tion dictionary  and  in  a  little  while  he  can  possess 
himself  of  it. 

You  may  think  this  a  large  order;  you  may 
think  I  am  demanding  linguistic  prodigies;  but 
remember  that  I  am  upon  my  own  ground  here ;  I 


150      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

am  a  trained  teacher  and  a  student  of  pedagogic 
science,  and  I  am  a  watchful  parent ;  I  know  how 
time  and  opportunity  are  wasted  in  school,  and 
particularly  in  language  teaching.  Languages  are 
not  things  that  exist  in  isolated  subjects;  each 
one  illuminates  the  other  and — unless  it  is 
taught  with  stupefying  stupidity — leads  on  to 
others.  A  child  can  acquire  the  polyglot  habit 
almost  unawares.  This  widening  grasp  of  lan- 
guages is  or  was  within  the  capacity  of  nearly 
everyone  born  into  the  world — given  the  facilities. 

I  ask  you  to  note  that  qualification — "  given  the 
facilities.' ' 

And  now  let  us  turn  from  the  language  side  to 
the  rest  of  schooling.  A  second  main  division  of 
our  schooling  was  mathematical  instruction  of  a 
sort.  It  fell  into  the  three  more  or  less  watertight 
compartments  of  arithmetic,  algebra  and  Euclid. 
We  carried  on  in  these  closed  cells  what  was,  I 
now  perceive,  a  needlessly  laborious  and  need- 
lessly muddled  struggle  to  comprehend  quantity, 
series  and  form. 

In  all  these  matters,  looking  back  upon  what  I 
was  taught,  comparing  it  with  what  I  now  know, 
and  comparing  my  mind  with  the  minds  of  more 
fortunate  individuals,  I  cannot  resist  the  persua- 
sion that  I  was  very  badly  done  indeed  in  this  sec- 
tion. And  it  is  small  consolation  to  me  to  note 
that  most  people's  minds  seem  to  be  no  better 
done  than  mine. 

My  arithmetic,  for  instance,  is  mediocre.  It  is 
pervaded  by  inaccuracy.    You  may  say  that  this 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        151 

is  probably  want  of  aptitude.  Partly,  no  doubt, 
but  not  altogether.  What  is  want  of  aptitude? 
Bad  as  my  arithmetic  is  now  it  is  not  so  bad  as  it 
was  when  I  left  school.  When  I  was  about  twenty 
I  held  a  sort  of  inquest  upon  it  and  found  out  a 
number  of  things.  I  found  that  I  had  been  allowed 
to  acquire  certain  bad  habits  and  besetting  sins — 
most  people  do.  For  instance,  when  I  ran  up  a 
column  of  figures  to  add  them  I  would  pass  from 
nine  to  seven  quite  surely  and  say  sixteen ;  but  if 
I  went  from  seven  to  nine  I  had  a  vicious  disposi- 
tion to  make  it  eighteen.  Endless  additions  went 
wrong  through  that  one  error.  I  had  fumbled  into 
this  vice  and — this  is  my  point — my  school  had 
no  apparatus,  and  no  system  of  checks,  to  discover 
that  this  had  occurred.  I  used  to  get  my  addi- 
tion wrong  and  I  used  to  be  punished — stupidly — 
by  keeping  me  in  from  exercise.  Time  after  time 
this  happened ;  there  was  no  investigation  and  no 
improvement.  Nobody  ever  put  me  through  a 
series  of  test  sums  that  would  have  analyzed  my 
errors  and  discovered  these  besetting  sins  of 
mine  that  led  to  my  inaccurate  arithmetic. 

And  another  thing  that  made  my  arithmetic 
wrong  was  a  defect  in  eyesight.  My  two  eyes 
haven't  quite  the  same  focal  length  and  this  often 
puts  me  out  of  the  straight  with  a  column  of 
figures.  But  there  was  nothing  in  my  school  to 
discover  that,  and  my  school  never  did  discover  it. 

My  geometrical  faculties  are  also  very  poor  and 
undeveloped.  Euclid's  elements,  indeed,  I  have 
always  found  simple   and  straightforward,  but 


152      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

when  it  comes  to  anything  in  solid  geometry — the 
intersection  of  a  sphere  by  a  cone,  let  us  say,  or 
something  of  that  sort — I  am  hopelessly  at  sea. 
Deep-seated  habits  of  faulting  and  fogging,  which 
were  actually  developed  by  my  schooling,  prevent 
my  forming  any  conception  of  the  surfaces 
involved. 

Here  again,  just  as  with  the  language  teaching, 
hardly  any  of  us  are  really  fully  educated.  We 
suffer,  nearly  all  of  us,  from  a  lack  of  quantitative 
grasp  and  from  an  imperfect  grasp  of  form.  Few 
of  us  have  acquired  such  a  grasp.  Few  of  us  ever 
made  a  proper  use  of  models,  and  nearly  all  of 
us  have  miserably  trained  hands.  Given  proper 
facilities — and  here  again  I  ask  you  to  note  that 
proviso — given  proper  educational  facilities — 
most  of  us  would  not  only  be  able  to  talk  with 
most  people  in  the  world  but  we  should  also  have 
a  conception  of  form  and  quantity  far  more  subtle 
than  that  possessed  by  any  but  a  few  mathema- 
ticians and  mechanical  geniuses  to-day. 

Let  me  now  come  to  a  third  main  division  of 
what  we  call  schooling.  In  our  schooling  there 
was  an  attempt  to  give  us  a  view  of  the  world 
about  us  and  a  view  of  our  place  in  it,  under  the 
headings  of  History  and  Geography. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  imagine  a  feebler 
attempt.  The  History  and  Geography  I  had  was 
perhaps,  in  one  respect,  the  next  best  thing  to  a 
good  course.  It  was  so  thoroughly  and  hopelessly 
bad  that  it  left  me  with  a  vivid  sense  of  ignorance. 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        153 

I  read,  therefore,  with  great  avidity  during  my 
adolescence. 

In  English  schools  now  I  doubt  if  the  teaching 
of  history  is  much  better  than  it  was  in  my  time, 
but  geography  has  grown  and  improved — largely 
through  the  vigorous  initiative  of  Professor  Hux- 
ley, who  replaced  the  old  dreary  topography  by  a 
vivid  description  of  the  world  and  mingled  with  it 
a  sort  of  general  elementary  science  under  the 
name  of  Physiography.  This  subject,  with  the 
addition  of  some  elementary  Biology  and  Physiol- 
ogy does  now  serve  to  give  many  young  people  in 
Great  Britain  something  like  a  general  view  of 
the  world  as  a  whole.  We  need  now  to  make  a 
parallel  push  with  the  teaching  of  history.  Upon 
this  matter  of  the  teaching  of  history  I  am  a 
fanatic.  I  cannot  think  of  an  education  as  even 
half  done  until  there  has  been  a  fairly  sound  re- 
view of  the  whole  of  the  known  past,  from  the 
beginnings  of  the  geological  record  up  to  our  own 
time.  Until  that  is  done,  the  pupil  has  not  been 
placed  in  the  world.  He  is  incapable  of  under- 
standing his  relationship  to  and  his  role  in  the 
scheme  of  things.  He  is,  whatever  else  he  may 
have  learnt,  essentially  an  ignorant  person. 

And  now  let  me  recapitulate  these  demands  I 
have  made  upon  the  process  of  schooling — this 
process  of  teaching  that  begins  in  the  nursery  and 
ends  about  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seventeen.  I 
have  asked  that  it  should  involve  a  practical  mas- 
tery of  three  or  four  languages,  including  the 
mother  tongue,  and  that  perhaps  four  or  five 


154      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

other  additional  languages  shall  have  been 
studied,  so  to  speak,  in  skeleton.  I  have  added 
mathematics  carried  much  higher  and  farther  than 
most  of  our  schools  do  to-day.  I  have  demanded 
a  sound  knowledge  of  universal  history,  a  knowl- 
edge of  general  physical  and  general  biological 
science,  and  I  have  thrown  in,  with  scarcely  a  word 
of  apology,  a  good  training  of  the  eyes  and  hands 
in  drawing  and  manual  work. 

So  far  as  the  pupil  goes,  I  submit  this  is  an 
entirely  practicable  proposal.  It  can  be  done,  I 
am  convinced,  with  any  ordinary  pupil  of  average 
all-round  ability,  given — what  is  now  almost  uni- 
versally wanting — the  proper  educational  facili- 
ties. And  now  I  will  go  on  to  examine  the  ques- 
tion of  why  these  facilities  are  wanting.  I  want 
to  ask  why  a  large  class,  if  not  the  whole  of  our 
population,  is  not  educated  up  to  the  level  of  whie 
understanding  and  fully  developed  capacity  such 
a  schooling  as  I  have  sketched  out  implies. 

Well,  the  first  fact  obvious  to  every  parent  who 
has  ever  enquired  closely  into  the  educational  out- 
look of  his  offspring,  the  first  fact  we  have  to  face 
is  this:  there  are  not  enough  properly  equipped 
schools  and,  still  more,  not  enough  good  teachers, 
to  do  the  job.  It  is  proclaiming  no  very  profound 
secret  to  declare  that  there  is  hardly  such  a  thing 
in  the  world  to-day  as  a  fully  equipped  school, 
that  is  to  say  a  school  having  all  the  possible  ma- 
terial and  apparatus  and  staffed  sufficiently  with 
a  bright  and  able  teacher,  a  really  live  and  alert 
educationist,  in  every  necessary  subject,  such  as 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        155 

would  be  needed  to  give  this  ideal  education.  That 
is  the  great  primary  obstacle,  that  is  the  core  of 
our  present  problem.  We  cannot  get  our  modern 
community  educated  to  anything  like  its  full  possi- 
bilities as  yet  because  we  have  neither  the  teachers 
nor  the  schools. 

Now  is  this  a  final  limitation? 

For  a  moment  I  will  leave  the  question  of  the 
possibilities  of  more  and  better  equipped  schools 
on  one  side.  I  will  deal  with  the  supply  of  teach- 
ers. At  present  we  do  not  even  attempt  to  get 
good  teachers ;  we  do  not  offer  any  approach  to  a 
tolerable  life  for  an  ordinary  teacher;  we  compel 
them  to  lead  mean  and  restricted  lives ;  we  under- 
pay them  shockingly;  we  do  not  deserve  nearly 
such  good  teachers  as  we  get.  But  even  supposing 
we  were  to  offer  reasonable  wages  for  teachers ;  an 
average  all-round  wage  of  £1000  a  year  or  so,  and 
respect  and  dignity;  it  does  not  follow  that  we 
should  get  as  many  as  we  should  need — using  the 
methods  that  are  in  use  to-day — to  provide  this 
ideal  schooling  for  most  of  our  population,  or, 
indeed,  for  any  large  section  of  our  population. 

You  will  note  a  new  proviso  creeping  in  at  this 
point — " using  the  methods  that  are  used  to-day." 

Because  you  must  remember  it  is  not  simply  a 
matter  of  payment  that  makes  the  teacher. 
Teachers  are  born  and  not  made.  Good  teaching 
requires  a  peculiar  temperament  and  distinctive 
aptitudes.  I  doubt  very  much,  even  if  you  could 
secure  the  services  of  every  human  being  who  had 
the  natural  gifts  needed  in  a  good  teacher,  if  you 


156      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

could  disregard  every  question  of  cost  and  pay- 
ment, I  doubt  whether  even  then  you  would  com- 
mand the  services  of  more  than  one  passable 
teacher  for  a  hundred  children  and  of  more  than 
one  really  inspired  and  inspiring  teacher  for  five 
hundred  children.  No  doubt  you  could  get  a  sort 
of  teacher  for  every  score  or  even  for  every  dozen 
children,  a  commonplace  person  who  could  be 
trained  to  do  a  few  simple  educational  things,  but 
I  am  speaking  now  of  good  teachers  who  have  the 
mental  subtlety,  the  sympathy  and  the  devotion 
necessary  for  efficient  teaching  by  the  individualis- 
tic methods  in  use  to-day.  And  since,  using  the 
methods  that  are  used  to-day,  you  can  only  hope 
to  secure  fully  satisfactory  results  with  one 
teacher  to  every  score  of  pupils,  or  fewer,  and 
since  it  is  unlikely  we  shall  ever  be  able  to  com- 
mand the  services  of  more  than  a  tithe  of  the  peo- 
ple who  could  teach  well,  it  seems  that  we  come 
up  here  against  an  insurmountable  obstacle  to  an 
educated  population. 

Now  I  want  to  press  home  the  idea  of  that  diffi- 
culty. I  am  an  old  and  seasoned  educationist; 
most  of  my  earliest  writings  are  concealed  in  the 
anonymity  of  the  London  educational  papers  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago,  and  my  knowledge  of 
educational  literature  is  fairly  extensive.  I  know 
in  particular  the  literature  of  educational  reform. 
And  I  do  not  recall  that  I  have  ever  encountered 
any  recognition  of  this  fundamental  difficulty  in 
the  way  of  educational  development.  The  litera- 
ture of  educational  reform  is  always  assuming 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        157 

parents  of  limitless  intelligence,  sympathy  and 
means,  employing  teachers  of  limitless  energy  and 
capacity.  And  that  to  an  extreme  degree  is  what 
we  haven't  got  and  what  we  can  never  hope  to 
have. 

Educational  reformers  seem  always  to  be  look- 
ing at  education  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
individual  scholastic  enterprise  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual pupil,  and  hardly  ever  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  public  task  dealing  with  the  community 
as  a  whole.  For  all  practical  purposes  this  makes 
waste  paper  of  a  considerable  proportion  of  edu- 
cational literature.  This  literature,  the  reader 
will  find,  is  pervaded  by  certain  fixed  ideas.  There 
is  a  sort  of  standing  objection  to  any  machining  of 
education.  There  is,  we  are  constantly  told,  to  be 
no  syllabus  of  instruction,  no  examinations  and  no 
controls,  no  prescribed  text-books  or  diagrams  be- 
cause these  things  limit  the  genius  of  the  teacher. 
And  this  goes  on  with  a  blissful  invincible  disre- 
gard of  the  fact  that  in  nine  hundred  and  ninety- 
nine  cases  out  of  the  thousand  the  genius  of  the 
teacher  isn't  and  can't  be  there.  And  also  of  the 
fact  that  this  affair  of  elementary  education  has 
in  its  essentials  been  done  over  and  over  and  over 
again  for  thousands  of  millions  of  times.  There 
ought  to  be  as  much  scope  left  for  genius  and 
originality  in  ordinary  teaching  as  there  is  for 
genius  and  originality  in  a  hen  laying  an  ordinary 

These  educational  idealists  are  always  disre- 
garding the  fundamental  problem  of  educational 


158      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

organization  altogether,  the  problem  of  economy, 
economy  of  the  most  precious  thing  of  all,  teaching 
power.  It  is  the  problem  of  stretching  the  com- 
petent teacher  over  the  maximum  number  of 
pupils,  and  that  can  be  done  only  by  the  same 
methods^  of  economy  that  are  practised  in  every 
other  large-scale  production — by  the  standardiza- 
tion of  everything  that  can  be  standardized,  and 
by  the  use  of  every  possible  time  and  labour-sav- 
ing device  and  every  possible  replacement  of  hu- 
man effort,  not  in  order  to  dispense  with  original- 
ity and  initiative  but  in  order  to  conserve  them 
for  application  at  their  points  of  maximum 
efficiency. 

I  have  said  that  a  disregard  of  the  possibilities 
of  wide  organization  and  its  associated  economy 
of  effort  is  characteristic  of  most  "advanced' ' 
educational  literature.  You  will,  if  you  will  exam- 
ine them,  find  that  disregard  working  out  to  its 
natural  consequences  in  what  are  called  the  "  ad- 
vanced* '  schools  that  appeal  to  educationally  anx- 
ious parents  nowadays.  You  will  find  that  these 
places,  often  very  picturesque  and  pleasing-look- 
ing places,  are  rarely  prosperous  enough  to  main- 
tain more  than  one  or  two  good  teachers.  The 
rest  of  the  staff  shrinks  from  scrutiny.  You  will 
find  these  schools  adorned  with  attractive  dia- 
grams drawn  by  the  teachers,  and  strikingly  origi- 
nal models  and  apparatus  made  by  the  teachers, 
and  if  you  look  closely  into  the  matter  or  consult 
an  intelligent  pupil,  you  will  find  there  are  never 
enough  diagrams  and  apparatus  to  see  a  course 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        159 

through.  If  yon  press  that  matter  you  will  find 
that  they  haven't  had  time  to  make  them  so  far. 
And  they  will  never  get  so  far.  No  school,  how- 
ever rich  and  prosperous  and  however  enthusias- 
tically run,  can  hope  to  make  for  itself  all  the 
plant  and  diagrams  and  apparatus  needed  for  a 
fully  efficient  modern  education  such  as  we  have 
sketched  out.  As  well  might  a  busy  man  hope 
to  array  himself,  by  his  own  efforts,  with  hats, 
suits  and  boots  made  by  himself  out  of  wool  and 
raw  hides. 

But  now  I  think  you  will  begin  to  see  what  I 
am  driving  at.  It  is  this :  that  if  the  general  level 
of  education  is  to  be  raised  in  our  modern  com- 
munity, and  if  that  better  education  is  to  be 
spread  over  most  of  our  community,  it  is  necessary 
to  reorganize  education  in  the  world  upon  entirely 
bolder,  more  efficient,  and  more  economical  lines. 
We  are  inexorably  limited  as  to  the  number  of 
good  teachers  we  can  get  into  the  educational 
organization,  and  we  are  limited  as  inexorably  as 
to  the  quality  of  the  rank  and  file  of  our  teaching 
profession;  but  we  are  not  limited  in  the  equip- 
ment and  systematic  organization  of  teaching 
methods  and  apparatus.  That  is  what  I  want  par- 
ticularly to  enlarge  upon  now. 

Think  of  the  ordinary  school-house — a  mere 
empty  brick  building  with  a  few  hat-pegs,  a  stale 
map  or  so,  half  a  dozen  plaster  casts,  a  few  hun- 
dred tattered  books,  a  blackboard,  and  some 
broken  chemical  apparatus:  think  of  it  as  the 
dingy  insufficiency  it  is !    In  such  a  place  the  best 


160      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

teacher  must  needs  waste  three-fourths  of  his  en- 
ergies. In  such  a  place  staff  and  pupils  meet 
chiefly  to  waste  each  other's  time.  This  is  the  first 
and  principal  point  at  which  we  can  stanch  the 
wastage  of  teaching  energy  that  now  goes  on. 
Everywhere  about  the  world  nowadays,  the  school- 
house  is  set  up  and  equipped  by  a  private  person 
or  a  local  authority  in  more  or  less  complete  igno- 
rance of  educational  possibilities,  in  more  or  less 
complete  disconnectedness,  without  any  of  the 
help  or  any  of  the  economy  that  comes  from  a  cen- 
tralized mass  production.  Let  us  now  consider 
what  we  might  have  in  the  place  of  this  typical 
schoolhouse  of  to-day. 

Let  me  first  suggest  that  every  school  should 
have  a  complete  library  of  very  full  and  explicit 
lesson  notes,  properly  sorted  and  classified.  All 
the  ordinary  subjects  in  schools  have  been  taught 
over  and  over  again  millions  and  millions  of  times. 
Few  people,  I  think,  realize  that,  and  fewer  still 
realize  the  reasonable  consequences  of  that.  Hu- 
man minds  are  very  much  the  same  everywhere, 
and  the  best  way  of  teaching  every  ordinary  school 
subject,  the  best  possible  lesson  and  the  best  pos- 
sible succession  of  lessons,  ought  to  have  been 
worked  out  to  the  last  point,  and  the  courses  ought 
to  have  been  stereotyped  long  ago.  Yet  if  you  go 
into  any  school  to-day,  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of 
the  hundred  you  will  find  an  inexpert  and  ill-pre- 
pared young  teacher  giving  a  clumsy,  vamped-up 
lesson  as  though  it  had  never  been  given  before. 
He  or  she  will  have  no  proper  notes  and  no  proper 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        161 

diagrams,  and  a  halting  and  faulty  discourse  will 
be  eked  out  by  feeble  scratchings  with  chalk  on  a 
blackboard,  by  querulous  questioning  of  the 
pupils,  and  irrelevancies.  The  thing  is  prepos- 
terous. 

And  linked  up  with  this  complete  equipment  of 
proper  lesson  notes  upon  which  the  teacher  will 
give  the  lessons,  there  should  be  a  thing  which 
does  not  exist  at  present  in  any  school  and  which 
ought  to  exist  in  every  school,  a  collection  of  some 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  pictures  and  diagrams, 
properly  and  compactly  filed ;  a  copious  supply  of 
maps,  views  of  scenery,  pictures  of  towns,  and  so 
forth  for  teaching  geography,  diagrams  and  tables 
for  scientific  subjects,  and  so  on  and  so  on.  You 
must  remember  that  if  the  schools  of  the  world 
were  thought  of  as  a  whole  and  dealt  with  as  a 
whole,  these  things  could  be  produced  wholesale  at 
a  cost  out  of  comparison  cheaper  than  they  are 
made  to-day.  There  is  no  reason  whatever  why 
school  equipment  should  not  be  a  world  market. 
A  lesson  upon  the  geography  of  Sweden  needs  pre- 
cisely the  same  maps,  the  same  pictures  of  scenery, 
types  of  people,  animals,  cities,  and  so  forth, 
whether  that  lesson  is  given  in  China  or  Peru  or 
Morocco  or  London.  There  is  no  reason  why  these 
pictures  and  maps  should  not  be  printed  from  the 
same  blocks  and  distributed  from  the  same  centre 
for  the  schools  of  all  mankind.  If  the  government 
of  any  large  country  had  the  vigour  and  intelli- 
gence to  go  right  ahead  and  manufacture  a  proper 
equipment  of  notes  and  diagrams  for  its  own  use 


162      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

in  all  its  own  schools,  it  would  probably  be  able 
to  recoup  itself  for  most  of  the  outlay  by  domi- 
nating the  map  and  diagram  markets  of  the  rest 
of  the  world. 

And  next  to  this  full  and  manageable  collection 
of  pictures  and  diagrams,  which  the  teacher  would 
whip  out,  with  the  appropriate  notes,  five  minutes 
before  his  lesson  began,  the  modern  school  would 
have  quite  a  considerable  number  of  gramophones. 
These  would  be  used  not  only  to  supply  music  for 
drill  and  so  forth,  and  for  the  analytical  study  of 
music,  but  for  the  language  teaching.  Instead  of 
the  teacher  having  to  pretend,  as  he  usually  pre- 
tends now,  to  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  foreign 
language  he  can  really  only  smatter,  he  would 
become  the  honest  assistant  of  the  real  teaching 
instrument — the  gramophone.  Here,  again,  it  is 
a  case  for  big  methods  or  none — a  case  for  mass 
production.  A  mass  production  of  gramophone 
records  for  language  teaching  throughout  the 
world  would  so  reduce  the  cost  that  every  school 
could  quite  easily  be  equipped  with  a  big  repertory 
of  language  records.  For  the  first  year  of  any 
language  study,  at  any  rate,  the  work  would  go 
always  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  proper  accent 
and  intonation.  And  all  over  the  world  each  lan- 
guage would  be  taught  with  the  same  accent  and 
quantities  and  idioms— a  very  desirable  thing  in- 
deed. 

And  now  let  me  pass  on  to  another  requirement 
for  an  efficient  school  that  our  educational  organ- 
ization has  still  to  discover — the  method  of  using 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        163 

the  cinematograph.  I  ask  for  half  a  dozen  pro- 
jectors or  so  in  every  school,  and  for  a  well-stocked 
store-house  of  films.  The  possibilities  of  certain 
branches  of  teaching  have  been  altogether  revolu- 
tionized by  the  cinematograph.  In  nearly  every 
school  nowadays  you  will  find  a  lot  of  more  or  less 
worn  and  damaged  scientific  apparatus  which  is 
supposed  to  be  used  for  demonstrating  the  ele- 
mentary facts  of  chemistry,  physics  and  the  like. 
There  is  a  belief  that  the  science  teachers — and 
they  do  their  best  with  the  time  and  skill  and 
material  at  their  disposal — rig  up  experimental 
displays  of  the  more  illuminating  experimental 
facts  with  this  damaged  litter.  Many  of  us  can 
recall  the  realities  of  the  sort  of  demonstration  I 
mean.  The  performance  took  two  or  three  hours 
to  prepare,  an  hour  to  deliver  and  an  hour  or  so  to 
clear  away;  it  was  difficult  to  follow,  impossible 
to  repeat,  it  usually  went  wrong,  and  almost  in- 
variably the  teacher  lost  his  temper.  These  prac- 
tical demonstrations  occurred  usually  in  the  open- 
ing enthusiasm  of  the  term.  As  the  weeks  wore 
on,  the  pretence  of  practical  teaching  was  quietly 
dropped,  and  we  crammed  our  science  out  of  the 
text-book. 

Now  that  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  still  goes  on. 
But  it  ought  to  be  entirely  out  of  date.  All  that 
scientific  bric-a-brac  in  the  cupboard  had  far  bet- 
ter be  thrown  away.  All  the  demonstration  ex- 
periments that  science  teachers  will  require  in  the 
future  can  be  performed  once  for  all — before  a 
cinematograph.     They  can  be  done  finally;  they 


164      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

need  never  be  done  again.  You  can  get  the  best 
and  most  dexterous  teacher  in  the  world — he  can 
do  what  has  to  be  done  with  the  best  apparatus,  in 
the  best  light;  anything  that  is  very  minute  or 
subtle  you  can  magnify  or  repeat  from  another 
point  of  view;  anything  that  is  intricate  you  can 
record  with  extreme  slowness;  you  can  show  the 
facts  a  mile  off  or  six  inches  off,  and  all  that  your 
actual  class  teacher  need  do  now  is  to  spend  five 
minutes  on  getting  out  the  films  he  wants,  ten 
minutes  in  reading  over  the  corresponding  lecture 
notes,  and  then  he  can  run  the  film,  give  the  les- 
son, question  his  class  upon  it,  note  what  they  miss 
and  how  they  take  it,  run  the  film  again  for  a  sec- 
ond scrutiny,  and  get  out  for  the  subsequent  study 
of  the  class  the  ample  supply  of  diagrams  and  pic- 
tures needed  to  ^x  the  lesson.  Can  there  be  any 
comparison  between  the  educational  efficiency  of 
the  two  methods? 

So  I  put  it  to  you,  that  it  is  possible  now  to 
make — and  that  the  world  needs  badly  that  we 
should  make — a  new  sort  of  school,  a  standardized 
school,  a  school  richly  equipped  with  modern  ap- 
paratus and  economizing  the  labour  of  teaching 
to  an  extent  at  present  undreamt  of,  in  which,  all 
over  the  world,  the  same  stereotyped  lessons,  lead- 
ing the  youth  of  the  whole  world  through  a  paral- 
lel course  of  schooling,  can  be  delivered,  » 

I  know  that  in  putting  this  before  you  I  chal- 
lenge some  of  the  most  popular  affectations  of  cul- 
tivated people.  I  know  that  many  people  will  be 
already  writhing  with  a  genteel  horror  at  the  idea 


THE  SCHOOLING  OF  THE  WORLD        165 

of  the  same  lesson  being  given  in  identical  terms 
to  everybody  in  turn  throughout  the  world.  It 
sounds  monotonous.  It  will  rob  the  world  of 
variety — and  so  on  and  so  on.  But  indeed  it  will 
not  be  monotonous  at  all.  That  lesson  will  be  new 
and  fresh  and  good  to  every  pupil  who  receives  it. 
And  remember  it  is  by  our  hypothesis  the  best 
possible  form  and  arrangement  of  that  lesson.  It 
is  to  take  the  place  of  a  sham  lesson  or  no  lesson 
at  all.  There  is  an  eternal  freshness  in  learning 
as  in  all  the  other  main  things  in  life.  It  will  be 
no  more  monotonous  than  having  one's  seventh 
birthday  or  falling  in  love  for  the  first  time. 

And  as  for  variety,  I  for  one  do  not  care  how 
soon  every  possible  variety  of  ignorance  and  mis- 
conception is  banished  from  the  world.  The  sun 
shines  on  the  whole  world  and  it  is  the  same  sun. 
I  have  still  to  be  persuaded  that  our  planet  would 
be  more  various  and  interesting  if  it  were  lit  by 
two  or  three  thousand  uncertain,  spasmodic  and 
differently  coloured  searchlights  directed  upon  it 
from  every  direction.  I  am  pleading  for  a  clear 
white  light  of  education  that  shall  go  like  the  sun 
round  the  whole  world. 

You  see  that  in  all  this  I  am  driving  at — what 
shall  I  call  it  ? — syndicated  schools,  syndicated  les- 
son notes,  and,  so  far  as  equipment  goes,  mass  pro- 
duction. I  want  to  see  the  sort  of  thing  happen- 
ing to  schools  that  has  already  happened  to  many 
sorts  of  retail  shops.  In  the  place  of  little  ill- 
equipped  schools,  each  run  by  its  own  teacher  and 
buying  its  own  books  and  diagrams  and  material 


166       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

and  so  forth  in  small  quantities  at  high  prices,  I 
want  to  see  a  great  central  organization,  employ- 
ing teachers  of  genius,  working  in  consultation  and 
co-operation  and  producing  lesson  notes,  dia- 
grams, films,  phonograph  records,  cheaply,  abun- 
dantly, on  a  big  scale  for  a  nation,  or  a  group  of 
nations,  or,  if  you  like,  for  all  the  world,  just  as 
America  produces  watches  and  alarum  clocks  and 
cheap  automobiles  for  all  the  world.  And  I  want 
to  see  the  schools  of  the  world  being  run,  so  far  as 
the  intellectual  training  goes,  not  by  local  com- 
mittees but  by  that  central  organization. 

It  is  only  by  this  reorganization  of  schooling 
upon  the  lines  of  big  production  that  we  can  hope 
to  get  a  civilized  community  in  the  world  at  an 
educational  level  very  markedly  higher  than  the 
existing  educational  level. 

But  if  we  could  so  economize  teaching  energy 
— if  we  made  our  really  great  teachers,  by  the  use 
of  modern  appliances,  teachers  not  of  handfuls  but 
of  millions ;  if  we  insisted  upon  a  universal  appli- 
cation of  the  best  and  most  effective  methods  of 
teaching,  just  as  we  insist  upon  the  best  and  most 
effective  methods  of  street  traction  and  town 
lighting — then  I  believe  it  would  be  possible  to 
build  the  civilization  of  the  years  to  come  on  a 
foundation  of  mental  preparation  incomparably 
sounder  and  higher  than  anything  we  know  of 
to-day. 


VII 

COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK 

And  now  let  us  go  on  to  the  next  stages  of 
education. 

The  schooling  process  is  a  natural  phase  in 
human  development — it  is  our  elaboration  of  the 
natural  learning  of  boyhood  and  girlhood  and  of 
adolescence.  There  was  schooling  before  schools ; 
there  was  schooling  before  humanity.  I  have 
watched  a  cat  schooling  her  kittens.  Schooling  is 
a  part  of  being  young.  And  we  grow  up.  So 
there  comes  a  time  when  schooling  is  over,  when 
the  process  of  equipment  gives  place  to  an  increas- 
ing share  in  the  activities  and  decisions  of  adult 
life. 

Nevertheless  for  us  education  must  still  go  on. 

I  suppose  that  the  savage  or  the  barbarian  or 
the  peasant  in  any  part  of  the  world  or  the  unedu- 
cated man  anywhere  would  laugh  if  you  told  him 
that  the  adult  must  still  learn.  But  in  our  mod- 
ern world — I  mean  the  more  or  less  civilized  world 
of  the  last  twenty-five  centuries  or  so — there  has 
grown  up  a  new  idea — new,  I  mean,  in  the  sense 
that  it  runs  counter  to  the  life  scheme  of  primi- 
tive humanity  and  of  most  other  living  things — 
and  that  is  the  idea  tlvat  one  can  go  on  learning 

167 


168       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

right  up  to  the  end  of  life.  It  marks  off  modern 
man  from  all  animals,  that  in  his  adult  life  he  can 
display  a  sense  that  there  remains  something  still 
to  be  investigated  and  wisdom  still  to  be  acquired. 

I  do  not  know  enough  history  to  tell  you  with 
any  confidence  when  adult  men,  instead  of  just 
going  about  the  business  of  life  after  they  had 
grown  up,  continued  to  devote  themselves  to  learn- 
ing, to  a  deliberate  prolongation  of  what  is  for  all 
other  animals  an  adolescent  phase.  But  by  the 
time  of  Buddha  in  India  and  Confucius  in  China 
and  the  schools  of  the  philosophers  in  the  Greek 
world  the  thing  was  in  full  progress.  That  was 
twenty-six  centuries  ago  or  more. 

Something  of  the  sort  may  have  been  going  on 
in  the  temples  of  Egypt  or  Samaria  a  score  of 
centuries  before.  I  do  not  know.  You  must  ask 
some  such  great  authority  as  Professor  Breasted 
about  that.  It  may  be  fifty  or  a  hundred  centuries 
since  men,  although  they  were  fully  grown  up, 
still  went  on  trying  to  learn. 

The  idea  of  adult  learning  has  spread  ever 
since.  To-day  I  suppose  most  educated  people 
would  agree  that  so  long  as  we  live  we  learn  and 
ought  to  learn — that  we  ought  to  develop  our  ideas 
and  enlarge,  correct  and  change  our  ideas. 

But  even  to-day  you  will  find  people  who  have 
not  yet  acquired  this  view.  You  will  find  even 
teachers  and*  doctors  and  business  men  who  are 
persuaded  that  they  had  learnt  all  that  there  was 
to  learn  by  twenty-five  or  thirty.  It  is  only  quite 
recently  that  this  idea  has  passed  beyond  a  special 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       169 

class  and  pervaded  the  world  generally — the  idea 
of  everyone  being  a  life-long  student  and  of  the 
whole  world  becoming,  as  it  were,  a  university  for 
those  who  have  passed  beyond  the  schooling  stage. 

It  has  spread  recently  because  in  recent  years 
the  world  has  changed  so  rapidly  that  the  idea  of 
settling  down  for  life  has  passed  out  of  our  minds, 
has  given  place  to  a  new  realization  of  the  need 
of  continuous  adaptation  to  the  very  end  of  our 
days.  It  is  no  good  settling  down  in  a  world  that, 
on  its  part,  refuses  to  do  anything  of  the  sort. 

But  hitherto,  before  these  new  ideas  began  to 
spread  in  our  community,  the  mass  of  men  and 
women  definitely  settled  down.  At  twelve,  or  fif- 
teen, or  sixteen,  or  twenty  it  was  decided  that  they 
should  stop  learning.  It  has  only  been  a  rare 
and  exceptional  class  hitherto  that  has  gone  on 
learning  throughout  life.  The  scene  and  field  of 
that  learning  hitherto  has  been  in  our  Western 
communities  the  University.  Essentially  the  Uni- 
versity is  and  has  been  an  organization  of  adult 
learning  as  distinguished  from  preparatory  and 
adolescent  learning. 

But  between  the  phase  of  schooling  and  the 
phase  of  adult  learning  there  is  an  intermediate 
stage. 

In  Scotland  and  America  that  is  distinguished 
and  thought  of  clearly  as  the  college  stage.  But  in 
England,  where  we  do  not  think  so  clearly,  this 
college  stage  is  mixed  up  with  and  done  partly  at 
school  and  partly  in  the  University.  It  is  not 
marked  off  so  definitely  from  the  stage  of  general 


170       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

preparation  that  precedes  it  or  from  the  stage  of 
free  intellectual  enterprise  that  follows  it. 

Now  what  should  college  give  the  young  citi- 
zen, male  or  female,  upon  the  foundation  of  school- 
ing we  have  already  sketched  out?  In  practice  we 
find  a  good  deal  of  technical  study  comes  into  the 
college  stage.  The  budding  lawyer  begins  to  read 
law,  the  doctor  starts  his  professional  studies,  the 
future  engineer  becomes  technical,  and  the  young 
merchant  sets  to  work,  or  should  do,  to  study  the 
great  movements  of  commerce  and  business 
method  and  organization. 

As  the  college  stage  of  those  who  don't,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  go  to  college,  we  have  new  in 
every  civilized  country  the  evening  continuation 
school,  the  evening  technical  school  and  the  works 
school. 

But  important  as  these  things  are  from  the 
point  of  view  of  service,  they  are  not  the  soul — not 
the  real  meaning  of  the  college  stage. 

The  soul  of  the  college  stage,  the  most  impor- 
tant value  about  it,  is  that  in  it  is  a  sort  of  pre- 
paratory pause  and  inspection  of  the  whole  arena 
of  life.  It  is  the  educational  concomitant  of  the 
stage  of  adolescence. 

The  young  man  and  the  young  woman  begin 
to  think  for  themselves,  and  the  college  education 
is  essentially  the  supply  of  stimulus  and  material 
for  that  process. 

It  was  in  the  college  stage  that  most  of  us  made 
out  our  religion  and  made  it  real  for  ourselves. 
It  was  then  we  really  took  hold  of  social  and  politi- 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       171 

cal  ideas,  when  we  became  alive  to  literature  and 
art,  when  we  began  the  delightful  and  distressful 
enterprise  of  finding  ourselves. 

And  I  think  most  of  us  will  agree  when  we  look 
back  that  the  most  real  thing  in  our  college  life 
was  not  the  lecturing  and  the  lessons — very  much 
of  that  stuff  could  very  well  have  been  done  in  the 
schooling  stage — but  the  arguments  of  the  debat- 
ing society,  the  discussions  that  broke  out  in  the 
class-room  or  laboratory,  the  talks  in  one's  rooms 
about  God  and  religion,  about  the  state  and  free- 
dom, about  art,  about  every  possible  and  impos- 
sible social  relationship. 

Now  in  addition  to  that  I  had  something  else 
in  my  own  college  course — something  of  the  same 
sort  of  thing  but  better. 

I  have  spoken  of  myself  as  under  educated.  My 
schooling  was  shocking  but,  as  a  blessed  compen- 
sation, my  college  stage  was  rather  exceptionally 
good.  My  schooling  ended  when  I  was  thirteen. 
My  father,  who  was  a  professional  cricketer,  was 
smashed  up  by  an  accident  and  I  had  three  horri- 
ble years  in  employment  in  shops.  Then  my  luck 
changed  and  I  found  myself  under  one  of  the  very 
greatest  teachers  of  his  time,  Professor  Huxley. 
I  worked  at  the  Eoyal  College  of  Science  in  Lon- 
don for  one  year  under  him  in  his  great  course 
in  zoology,  and  for  a  year  and  a  half  under  a 
very  good  but  rather  uninspiring  teacher,  Profes- 
sor Judd,  the  geologist.  I  did  also  physics  and 
astronomy.  Altogether  I  had  three  full  years  of 
science  study.    And  the  teaching  of  biology  at  that 


172       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

time,  as  Huxley  had  planned  it,  was  a  continuing, 
systematic,  illuminating  study  of  life,  of  the  forms 
and  appearances  of  life,  of  the  way  of  life,  of 
the  interplay  of  life,  of  the  past  of  life  and  the 
present  prospect  of  life.  It  was  a  tremendous 
training  in  the  sifting  of  evidence  and  the  exami- 
nation of  appearances. 

Every  man  is  likely  to  be  biassed,  I  suppose,  in 
favour  of  his  own  educational  course.  Yet  it 
seems  to  me  that  those  three  years  of  work  were 
educational — that  they  gave  a  vision  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole  and  a  discipline  and  a  power 
such  as  no  other  course,  no  classical  or  mathemati- 
cal course  I  have  ever  had  a  chance  of  testing, 
could  do. 

I  am  so  far  a  believer  in  a  biological  backbone 
for  the  college  phase  of  education  that  I  have 
secured  it  for  my  sons  and  I  have  done  all  I  can 
to  extend  it  in  England.  Nevertheless,  important 
as  that  formal  college  work  was  to  me,  it  still 
seems  to  me  that  the  informal  part  of  our  college 
life — the  talk,  the  debates,  the  discussion,  the 
scampering  about  London  to  attend  great  political 
meetings,  to  hear  William  Morris  on  Socialism, 
Auberon  Herbert  on  Individualism,  Gladstone  on 
Home  Eule,  or  Bradlaugh  on  Atheism,  for  those 
were  the  lights  of  my  remote  student  days — was 
about  equally  important. 

If  schooling  is  a  training  in  expression  and  com- 
munication, college  is  essentially  the  establish- 
ment of  broad  convictions.  And  in  order  that  they 
may  be  established  firmly  and  clearly,  it  is  neces- 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       173 

sary  that  the  developing  young  man  or  woman 
should  hear  all  possible  views  and  see  the  medal 
of  truth  not  only  from  the  obverse  but  from  the 
reverse  side. 

Now  here  again  I  want  to  put  the  same  sort  of 
questions  I  have  put  about  schooling. 

Is  the  college  stage  of  our  present  educational 
system  anywhere  near  its  maximum  possible  effi- 
ciency? And  could  it  not  be  extended  from  its 
present  limited  range  until  it  reached  practically 
the  whole  adolescent  community? 

Let  me  deal  with  the  first  of  these  questions 
first. 

Could  we  not  do  much  more  than  we  do  to  make 
the  broad  issues  of  various  current  questions  plain 
and  accessible  to  our  students  in  the  college  stage  ? 

For  example,  there  is  a  vast  discussion  afoot 
upon  the  questions  that  centre  upon  Property,  its 
rights  and  its  limitations.  There  is  a  great  liter- 
ature of  Collectivist  Socialism  and  Guild  Social- 
ism and  Communism.  About  these  things  our 
young  people  must  know.  They  are  very  urgent 
questions;  our  sons  and  daughters  will  have  to 
begin  to  deal  with  them  from  the  moment  they 
leave  college.  Upon  them  they  must  form  working 
opinions,  and  they  must  know  not  only  what  they 
themselves  believe  but,  if  our  public  affairs  are 
not  to  degenerate  into  the  squalid,  obstinate,  hope- 
less conflicts  of  prejudiced  adherents,  they  must 
know  also  what  is  believed  by  other  people  whose 
convictions  are  different  from  theirs. 


174      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

You  may  want  to  hush  these  matters  up.  Many 
elderly  people  do.    You  will  fail. 

All  our  intelligent  students  will  insist  upon 
learning  what  they  can  of  these  discussions  and 
forming  opinions  for  themselves.  And  if  the  Col- 
lege will  not  give  them  the  representative  books, 
a  fair  statement  of  the  facts  and  views,  and  some 
guidance  through  the  maze  of  these  questions,  it 
means  merely  that  they  will  get  a  few  books  in 
a  defiant  or  underhand  way  and  form  one-sided 
and  impassioned  opinions. 

Another  great  set  of  questions  upon  which  the 
adolescent  want  to  judge  for  themselves,  and 
ought  to  judge  for  themselves,  are  the  religious 
questions. 

And  a  third  group  are  those  that  determine  the 
principles  of  sexual  conduct. 

I  know  that  in  all  these  matters,  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic,  a  great  battle  rages  between 
dogma  and  concealment  on  the  one  hand  and  open 
ventilation  on  the  other. 

Upon  the  issue  I  have  no  doubt.  I  find  it  hard 
even  to  imagine  the  case  for  the  former  side. 

So  long  as  schooling  goes  on,  the  youngster  is 
immature,  needs  to  be  protected,  is  not  called  upon 
for  judgments  and  initiatives,  and  may  well  be 
kept  under  mental  limitations.  I  do  not  care  very 
much  how  you  censor  or  select  the  reading  and 
talking  and  thinking  of  the  schoolboy  or  schoolgirl. 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  with  adolescence  comes  the 
right  to  knowledge  and  the  right  of  judgment. 
And  that  it  is  the  task  and  duty  of  the  college  to 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       175 

give  matters  of  opinion  in  the  solid — to  let  the 
student  walk  round  and  see  them  from  every  side. 

Now  how  is  this  to  be  done? 

I  suggest  that  to  begin  with  we  open  wide  our 
colleges  to  propaganda  of  every  sort.  There  is 
still  a  general  tendency  in  universities  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  to  treat  propaganda  as  infec- 
tion. For  the  adolescent  it  is  not — it  is  a  stimulat- 
ing drug. 

Let  me  instance  my  own  case.  I  am  a  man  of 
Protestant  origins  and  with  a  Protestant  habit  of 
mind.  But  it  is  a  matter  of  great  regret  to  me  that 
there  is  no  good  Eoman  Catholic  propaganda 
available  for  my  sons  in  their  college  life.  I 
would  like  to  have  the  old  Mother  Church  giving 
my  boys  an  account  of  herself  and  of  the  part  she 
has  played  in  the  history  of  the  world,  telling 
them  what  she  stands  for  and  claims  to  be,  giving 
her  own  account  of  the  Mass.  These  things  are 
interwoven  with  our  past ;  they  are  part  of  us.  I 
do  not  like  them  to  go  into  a  church  and  stare  like 
foreigners  and  strangers  at  the  altar. 

And  side  by  side  with  that  Catholic  propaganda 
I  would  like  them  to  hear  an  interpretation  of 
religious  origins  and  church  history  by  some  non- 
catholic  or  sceptical  ethnologist.  He,  too,  should 
be  free  to  tell  his  story  and  drive  his  conclusions 
home. 

But  you  will  find  most  colleges  and  most  college 
societies  bar  religious  instruction  and  discussion. 
What  do  they  think  they  are  training!  Some  sort 
of  genteel  recluse — or  men  and  women? 


176      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

So,  too,  with  the  discussion  of  Bolshevism.  I 
do  not  know  how  things  are  in  America  bnt  in 
England  there  has  been  a  ridiculous  attempt  to 
suppress  Bolshevik  propaganda.  I  have  seen  a 
lot  of  Bolshevik  propaganda  and  it  is  not  very  con- 
vincing stuff.  But  by  suppressing  it,  by  police 
seizures  of  books  and  papers  and  the  like,  it  has 
been  invested  with  a  quality  of  romantic  mystery 
and  enormous  significance.  Our  boys  and  girls, 
especially  the  brighter  and  more  imaginative,  nat- 
urally enough  think  it  must  be  tremendous  stuff 
to  agitate  the  authorities  in  this  fashion. 

At  our  universities,  moreover,  the  more  loutish 
types  of  student  have  been  incited  to  attack  and 
smash  up  the  youths  suspected  of  such  reading. 
This  gives  it  the  glamour  of  high  intellectual 
quality. 

The  result  is  that  every  youngster  in  the  British 
colleges  with  a  spark  of  mental  enterprise  and 
self-respect  is  anxious  to  be  convinced  of  Bolshe- 
vik doctrine.  He  believes  in  Lenin — because  he 
has  been  prevented  from  reading  him.  Sober  col- 
lectivists  like  myself  haven't  a  chance  with  him. 

But  you  see  my  conception  of  the  college  course  ? 
Its  backbone  should  be  the  study  of  biology  and  its 
substance  should  be  the  threshing  out  of  the  burn- 
ing questions  of  our  day. 

You  may  object  to  this  that  I  am  proposing  the 
final  rejection  of  that  discipline  in  classical  phi- 
losophy which  is  still  claimed  as  the  highest  form 
of  college  education  in  the  world — the  sort  of 
course  that  the  men  take  in  what  is  called  Greats 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       177 

at  Oxford.  You  will  accuse  me  of  wanting  to  bury 
and  forget  Aristotle  and  Plato,  Heraclitus  and 
Lucretius,  and  so  forth  and  so  on. 

But  I  don't  want  to  do  that — so  far  as  their 
thought  is  still  alive.  So  far  as  their  thought  is 
still  alive,  these  men  will  come  into  the  discussion 
of  living  questions  now.  If  they  are  Ancients  and 
dead  then  let  them  be  buried  and  left  to  the  ar- 
chaeological excavator.  If  they  are  still  Moderns 
and  alive — I  defy  you  to  bury  them  if  you  are  dis- 
cussing living  questions  in  a  full  and  honest  way. 
But  don't  go  hunting  after  them,  if  they  are  still 
modern  Immortals  in  the  darkness  of  a  forgotten 
language.  Don't  make  a  superstition  of  them. 
Let  them  come  hunting  after  you.  Either  they  are 
unavoidable  if  your  living  questions  are  fully  dis- 
cussed, or  they  are  irrelevant  and  they  do  not 
matter.  That  there  is  a  wisdom  and  beauty  in 
the  classics  which  is  incommunicable  in  any  mod- 
ern language,  which  obviously  neither  ennobles 
nor  empowers,  but  which  is  nevertheless  su- 
premely precious,  is  a  kind  of  nonsense  dear  to  the 
second-rate  classical  don,  but  it  has  nothing  en- 
dearing about  it  for  any  other  human  beings.  I 
will  not  bother  you  further  with  that  sort  of  affec- 
tation here. 

And  this  college  course  I  have  sketched  should, 
in  the  modern  state,  pass  insensibly  into  adult 
mental  activities. 

Concurrently  with  it  there  will  be  going  on,  as 
I  have  said,  a  man's  special  technical  training. 
He  will  be  preparing  himself  for  a  life  of  indus- 


178      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

trialisro,  commerce,  engineering,  agriculture,  med- 
icine, administration,  education  or  what  not.  And 
as  with  the  man,  so  with  the  woman.  That,  too,  is 
a  process  which  in  this  changing  new  world  of  ours 
can  never  be  completed.  Neither  of  these  college 
activities  will  ever  really  leave  off.  All  through 
his  life  a  man  or  woman  should  be  confirming,  fix- 
ing or  modifying  his  or  her  general  opinions ;  and 
all  the  time  his  or  her  technical  knowledge  and 
power  should  be  consciously  increased. 

And  now  let  me  come  to  the  second  problem  we 
opened  up  in  connection  with  college  education — 
the  problem  of  its  extension. 

Can  we  extend  it  over  most  or  all  of  a  modern 
population? 

I  don't  think  we  can,  if  we  are  to  see  it  in  terms 
of  college  buildings,  class  rooms,  tutors,  profes- 
sors and  the  like.  Here  again,  just  as  in  the  case 
of  schooling,  we  have  to  raise  the  neglected  prob- 
lem— neglected  so  far  as  education  goes — of  econ- 
omy of  effort — and  we  have  to  look  once  more  at 
the  new  facilities  that  our  educational  institutions 
have  so  far  refused  to  utilize.  Our  European  col- 
leges and  universities  have  a  long  and  honourable 
tradition  that  again  owes  much  to  the  educational 
methods  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  Hellenic 
world.  This  tradition  was  already  highly  devel- 
oped before  the  days  of  printing  from  movable 
type,  and  long  before  the  days  when  maps  or  illus- 
trations were  printed.  The  higher  education, 
therefore,  was  still,  as  it  was  in  the  Stone  Age, 
largely  vocal.    And  the  absence  of  paper  and  so 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       179 

forth,  rendering  note-books  costly  and  rare,  made 
a  large  amount  of  memorizing  necessary.  For  that 
reason  the  mediaeval  university  teacher  was  al- 
ways dividing  his  subject  into  firstly  and  secondly 
and  fourthly  and  sixthly  and  so  on,  so  that  the  stu- 
dent could  afterwards  tick  off  and  reproduce  the 
points  on  his  fingers — a  sort  of  thumb  and  finger 
method  of  thought — still  to  be  found  in  perfection 
in  the  discourses  of  that  eminent  Catholic  apolo- 
gist, Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc.  It  is  a  method  that  de- 
stroys all  sense  of  proportion  between  the  head- 
ings ;  main  considerations  and  secondary  and  ter- 
tiary points  get  all  catalogued  off  as  equivalent 
numbers,  but  it  was  a  mnemonic  necessity  of  those 
vanished  days. 

And  they  have  by  no  means  completely  van- 
ished. We  still  use  the  lecture  as  the  normal  basis 
of  instruction  in  our  colleges,  we  still  hear  dis- 
courses in  the  firstly,  secondly  and  thirdly  form, 
and  we  still  prefer  even  a  second-rate  professor 
on  the  spot  to  the  printed  word  of  the  ablest 
teacher  at  a  distance.  Most  of  us  who  have  been 
through  college  courses  can  recall  the  distress  of 
hearing  a  dull  and  inadequate  view  of  a  subject 
being  laboriously  unfolded  in  a  long  series  of 
tedious  lectures,  in  spite  of  the  existence  of  full 
and  competent  text-books.  And  here  again  it- 
would  seem  that  the  time  has  come  to  centralize 
our  best  teaching,  to  create  a  new  sort  of  wide 
teaching  professor  who  will  teach  not  in  one  col- 
lege but  in  many,  and  to  direct  the  local  professor 
to  the  more  suitable  task  of  ensuring  by  a  com- 


180       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

mentary,  by  organized  critical  work,  and  so  forth, 
that  the  text-book  is  duly  read,  discussed  and  com- 
pared with  the  kindred  books  in  the  college 
library. 

This  means  that  the  great  teaching  professors 
will  not  lecture,  or  that  they  will  lecture  only  to 
try  over  their  treatment  of  a  subject  before  an 
intelligent  audience  as  a  prelude  to  publication. 
They  may  perhaps  visit  the  colleges  under  their 
influence,  but  their  basic  instrument  of  instruction 
will  be  not  a  course  of  lectures  but  a  book.  They 
will  carry  out  the  dictum  of  Carlyle  that  the  mod- 
ern university  is  a  university  of  books. 

Now  the  frank  recognition  of  the  book  and  not 
the  lecture  as  the  substantial  basis  of  instruction 
opens  up  a  large  and  interesting  range  of  possi- 
bilities. It  releases  the  process  of  learning  from 
its  old  servitude  to  place  and  to  time.  It  is  no 
longer  necessary  for  the  student  to  go  to  a  particu- 
lar room,  at  a  particular  hour,  to  hear  the  golden 
words  drop  from  the  lips  of  a  particular  teacher. 
The  young  man  who  reads  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
morning  in  luxurious  rooms  in  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  will  have  no  very  marked  advantage 
over  another  young  man,  employed  during  the 
day,  who  reads  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night  in  a  bed- 
sitting-room  in  Glasgow.  The  former,  you  will 
say,  may  get  commentary  and  discussion,  but  there 
is  no  particular  reason  why  the  latter  should  not 
form  some  sort  of  reading  society  with  his  fellows, 
and  discuss  the  question  with  them  in  the  dinner 
.hour  and  on  the  way  to  the  works.    Nor  is  there 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       181 

any  reason  why  he  should  not  get  tutorial  help  as  a 
university  extension  from  the  general  educational 
organization,  as  good  in  quality  as  any  other 
tutorial  help. 

And  this  release  of  the  essentials  of  a  college 
education  from  limitations  of  locality  and  time 
brought  about  by  modern  conditions,  not  only 
makes  it  unnecessary  for  a  man  to  come  "upV  to 
college  to  be  educated,  but  abolishes  the  idea  that 
his  educational  effort  comes  to  an  end  when  he 
goes  "down."  Attendance  at  college  no  longer 
justifies  a  claim  to  education ;  inability  to  enter  a 
college  is  no  longer  an  excuse  for  illiteracy. 

I  do  not  think  that  our  educational  and  uni- 
versity authorities  realize  how  far  the  college 
stage  of  education  has  already  escaped  from  the 
local  limitations  of  colleges;  they  do  not  under- 
stand what  a  great  and  growing  volume  of  adoles- 
cent learning  and  thought,  of  college  education  in 
the  highest  and  best  sense  of  the  word,  goes  on 
outside  the  walls  of  colleges  altogether;  and  on 
the  other  they  do  not  grasp  the  significant  fact 
that,  thanks  to  the  high  organization  of  sports  and 
amusements  and  social  life  in  our  more  prosperous 
universities,  a  great  proportion  of  the  youngsters 
who  come  in  to  their  colleges  never  get  the  reali- 
ties of  a  college  education  at  all,  and  go  out  into 
the  world  again  as  shallow  and  uneducated  as  they 
came  in.  And  this  failure  to  grasp  the  great 
change  in  educational  conditions  brought  about, 
for  the  most  part,  in  the  last  half  century,  accounts 
for  the  fact  that  when  we  think  of  any  extension  of 


182       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

higher  education  in  the  modern  community  we  are 
all  too  apt  to  think  of  it  as  a  great  proliferation  of 
expensive,  pretentious  college  buildings  and  a 
great  multiplication  of  little  teaching  professor- 
ships, and  a  further  segregation  of  so  many  hun- 
dreds or  thousands  of  our  adolescents  from  the 
general  community,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
reality  of  education  has  ceased  to  lie  in  that  direc- 
tion at  all.  The  modern  task  is  not  to  multiply 
teachers  but  to  exalt  and  intensify  exceptionally 
good  te'achers,  to  recognize  their  close  relation- 
ship with  the  work  of  university  research — which 
it  is  their  business  to  digest  and  interpret — and  to 
secure  the  production  and  wide  distribution  of 
books  throughout  the  community. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  type  of  adoles- 
cent education,  very  much  segregated  in  out-of- 
the-way  colleges  and  aristocratic  in  spirit,  such 
as  goes  on  now  at  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Yale,  Hol- 
loway,  Wellesley  and  the  like,  has  probably 
reached  and  passed  its  maximum  development.  I 
doubt  if  the  modern  community  can  afford  to  con- 
tinue it ;  it  certainly  cannot  afford  to  extend  it  very 
widely. 

But  as  I  have  pointed  out,  there  has  always 
been  a  second  strand  to  college  education — the 
technical  side,  the  professional  training  or  appren- 
ticeship. Here  there  are  sound  reasons  that  the 
student  should  go  to  a  particular  place,  to  the 
special  museums  and  laboratories,  to  the  institutes 
of  research,  to  the  hospitals,  factories,  works, 
ports,  industrial  centres  and  the  like  where  the 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       183 

realities  he  studies  are  to  he  found,  or  to  the  stu- 
dios or  workshops  or  theatres  where  they  practise 
the  art  to  which  he  aspires.  Here  it  seems  we 
have  natural  centres  of  aggregation  in  relation  to 
which  the  college  stage  of  a  civilized  community, 
the  general  adolescent  education,  the  vision  of  the 
world  as  a  whole  and  the  realization  of  the  indi- 
vidual place  in  it,  can  he  organized  most  con- 
veniently. 

You  see  that  what  I  am  suggesting  here  is  in 
effect  that  we  should  take  our  colleges,  so  far  as 
they  are  segregations  of  young  people  for  general 
adolescent  education,  and  break  them  as  a  cook 
breaks  eggs — and  stir  them  up  again  into  the  gen- 
eral intellectual  life  of  the  community. 

Coupled  with  that  there  should,  of  course,  he  a 
proposal  to  restrict  the  hours  of  industrial  work  or 
specialized  technical  study  up  to  the  age  of  twenty, 
at  least,  in  order  to  leave  time  for  this  college 
stage  in  the  general  education  of  every  citizen  of 
the  world. 

The  idea  has  already  been  broached  that  men 
and  women  in  the  modern  community  are  no 
longer  inclined  to  consider  themselves  as  ever 
completely  adult  and  finished ;  there  is  a  growing 
disposition  and  a  growing  necessity  to  keep  on 
learning  throughout  life.  In  the  worlds  of  re- 
search, of  literature  and  art  and  economic  enter- 
prise, that  adult  learning  takes  highly  specialized 
forms  which  I  will  not  discuss  now ;  but  in  the  gen- 
eral modern  community  the  process  of  continuing 
education  after  the  college  stage  is  still  evidently 


184      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

only  at  a  primitive  level  of  development.  There 
are  a  certain  number  of  literary  societies  and  soci- 
eties for  the  study  of  particular  subjects ;  the  pul- 
pit still  performs  an  educational  function;  there 
are  public  lectures  and  in  America  there  are  the 
hopeful  germs  of  what  may  become  later  on  a  very 
considerable  organization  of  adult  study  in  the 
Lyceum  Chautauqua  system;  but  for  the  general- 
ity of  people  the  daily  newspaper,  the  Sunday 
newspaper,  the  magazine  and  the  book  constitute 
the  only  methods  of  mental  revision  and  enlarge- 
ment after  the  school  or  college  stage  is  past. 

Now  we  have  to  remember  that  the  bulk  of  this 
great  organization  of  newspapers  and  periodicals 
and  all  the  wide  distribution  of  books  that  goes  on 
to-day  are  extremely  recent  things.  This  new 
nexus  of  print  has  grown  up  in  the  lifetime  of  four 
or  five  generations,  and  it  is  undergoing  constant 
changes.  "We  are  apt  to  forget  its  extreme  new- 
ness in  history  and  to  disregard  the  profound  dif- 
ference in  mental  conditions  it  makes  between  our 
own  times  and  any  former  period.  It  is  impossible 
to  believe  that  thus  far  it  is  anything  but  a  sketch 
and  intimation  of  what  it  will  presently  be.  It 
has  grown.  No  man  foresaw  it;  no  one  planned 
it.  We  of  this  generation  have  grown  up  with 
it  and  are  in  the  habit  of  behaving  as  though  this 
nexus  ha'd  always  been  with  us  and  as  though  it 
would  certainly  remain  with  us.  The  latter 
conclusion  is  almost  wilder  than  the  former. 

By  what  we  can  only  consider  a  series  of  for- 
tunate accidents,  the  press  and  the  book  world 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       185 

have  provided  and  do  provide  a  necessary  organ 
in  the  modern  world  state,  an  organ  for  swift  gen- 
eral information  upon  matters  of  fact  and  for  the 
rapid  promulgation  and  diffusion  of  ideas  and  in- 
terpretations. The  newspaper  grew,  as  we  know, 
out  of  the  news  letter  which  in  a  manuscript  form 
existed  before  the  Roman  Empire ;  it  owes  its  later 
developments  largely  to  the  advertisement  possi- 
bilities that  came  with  the  expansion  of  the  range 
of  trading  as  the  railways  and  suchlike  means  of 
communication  developed.  Modern  newspapers 
have  been  described,  not  altogether  inaptly,  as 
sheets  of  advertisements  with  news  and  discus- 
sions printed  on  the  back.  The  extension  of  book 
reading  from  a  small  class,  chiefly  of  men,  to  the 
whole  community  has  also  been  largely  a  response 
to  new  facilities ;  though  it  owes  something  also  to 
the  religious  disputes  of  the  last  three  centuries. 
The  population  of  Europe,  one  may  say  with  a  cer- 
tain truth,  first  learnt  to  read  the  Bible,  and  only 
afterwards  to  read  books  in  general.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  the  book  publishing  in  the  English  lan- 
guage in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
still  consisted  of  sermons  and  controversial  theo- 
logical works. 

Both  newspaper  and  book  production  began  in 
a  small  way  as  the  enterprise  of  free  individuals, 
without  anyone  realizing  the  dimensions  to  which 
the  thing  would  grow.  Our  modern  press  and 
book  trade,  in  spite  of  many  efforts  to  centralize 
and  control  it,  in  spite  of  Defence  of  the  Realm 
Acts  and  the  like,  is  still  the  production  of  an 


186      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

unorganized  multitude  of  persons.  It  i&  not  cen- 
tralized; it  is  not  controlled.  To  this  fact  the 
nexus  of  print  owes  what  is  still  its  most  valuable 
quality.  Thoughts  and  ideas  of  the  most  varied 
and  conflicting  sort  arise  and  are  developed  and 
worked  out  and  fought  out  in  this  nexus,  just  as 
they  do  in  a  freely  thinking  vigorous  mind. 

I  am  not,  you  will  npte,  saying  that  this  free- 
dom is  perfect  or  that  the  thought  process  of  the 
print  nexus  could  not  go  very  much  better  than  it 
does,  but  I  am  saying  that  it  has  a  very  consider- 
able freedom  and  vigour  and  that  so  far  as  it  has 
these  qualities  it  is  a  very  fine  thing  indeed. 

Now  many  people  think  that  we  are  moving  in 
the  direction  of  world  socialism  to-day.  Collec- 
tivism is  perhaps  a* better,  more  definite  word  than 
socialism,  and,  so  far  as  keeping  the  peace  goes, 
and  in  matters  of  transport  and  communication, 
trade,  currency,  elementary  education,  the  produc- 
tion and  distribution  of  staples  and  the  conserva- 
tion of  the  natural  resources  of  the  world  go,,  I 
believe  that  the  world  and  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  move  steadily  towards  a  world  collec- 
tivism. But  the  more  co-operation  we  have  in  our 
common  interests,  the  more  necessary  is  it  to 
guard  very  jealously  the  freedom  of  the  mind,  that 
is  to  say,  the  liberty  of  discussion  and  suggestion. 

It  is  here  that  the  Communist  regime  in  Russia 
has  encountered  its  most  fatal  difficulty.  A  catas- 
trophic unqualified  abolition  of  private  property 
has  necessarily  resulted  in  all  the  paper,  all  the 
printing  machinery,  all  the  libraries,  all  the  news- 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       187 

stalls  and  book  shops,  becoming  Government  prop- 
erty. It  is  impossible  to  print  anything  without 
the  consent  of  the  Government.  One  cannot  buy 
a  book  or  newspaper ;  one  must  take  what  the  Gov- 
ernment distributes.  Free  discussion — never  a 
very  free  thing  in  Eussia — has  now  on  any  gen- 
eral scale  become  quite  impossible.  It  was  a  dif- 
ficulty foreseen  long  ago  in  Socialist  discussions, 
but  never  completely  met  by  the  thorough  paced 
Communist.  At  one  blow  the  active  mental  life 
of  Eussia  has  been  ended,  and  so  long  as  Eussia 
remains  completely  and  consistently  communist  it 
cannot  be  resumed.  It  can  only  be  resumed  by 
some  surrender  of  paper,  printing  and  book  dis- 
tribution from  absolute  Government  ownership. to 
free  individual  control.  That  can  only  be  done  by 
an  abandonment  of  the  full  rigours  of  communist 
theory. 

In  our  western  communities  the  dangers  to  the 
intellectual  nexus  lie  rather  on  the  other  side.  The 
war  period  produced  considerable  efforts  at  Gov- 
ernment control  and  as  a  consequence  considerable 
annoyance  to  writers,  much  concealment  and  some 
interference  with' the  expression  of  opinion;  but 
on  the  whole  both  newspapers  and  books  held  their 
own.  There  is  to-day  probably  as  much  freedom 
of  publishing  as  ever  there  was.  It  is  not  from 
the  western  governments  that  mischief  is  likely  to 
come  to  free  intellectual  activity  in  the  western 
communities  but  from  the  undisciplined  individ- 
ual, and  from  the  incitements  to  mob  violence  by 


188       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

various  propagandist  religions  and  cults  against 
free  discussion. 

About  the  American  press  I  know  and  can  say 
little.  I  will  speak  only  of  things  with  which  I  am 
familiar.  I  am'  inclined  to  think  that  there  has 
been  a  considerable  increase  of  deliberate  lying  in 
the  British  press  since  1914,  and  a  marked  loss  of 
journalistic  self-respect.  Particular  interests  have 
secured  control  of  large  groups  of  papers  and 
pushed  their  particular  schemes  in  entire  disre- 
gard of  the  general  mental  well-being.  For  in- 
stance, there  has  recently  been  a  remarkable  boy- 
cott in  the  London  press  of  a  very  able  collectivist 
book,  Sir  Leo  Money's  " Triumph  of  Nationaliza- 
tion" because  it  would  have  interfered  with  the 
operation  of  very  large  groups  which  were  con- 
cerned in  getting  back  public  property  into  private 
hands  on  terms  advantageous  to  the  latter.  It  is 
a  book  not  only  important  as  a  statement  of  a 
peculiar  economic  view,  but  because  of  the  states- 
manlike gravity  and  clearness  of  its  exposition.  I 
do  not  think  it  would  have  been  possible  to  stand 
between  the  public  and  a  writer  in  this  way  in  the 
years  before  1914.  A  considerable  proportion  of 
the  industrial  and  commercial  news  is  now  written 
to  an  end.  The  British  press  has  also  suffered 
greatly  from  the  outbreak  of  social  and  nationalist 
rancour  arising  out  of  the  great  war,  the  inability 
of  the  European  mind  to  grasp  the  Bolshevik 
issue,  and  the  clumsy  blunderings  of  the  Versailles 
settlement.  Quite  half  the  news  from  Eastern 
Europe  that  appears  in  the  London  press  is  now 


COLLEGE.  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       189 

deliberate  fabrication,  and  a  considerable  propor- 
tion of  the  rest  is  rephrased  and  mutilated  to  give 
a  misleading  impression  to  the  reader. 

But  people  cannot  be  continuously  deceived  in 
this  way,  and  the  consequence  of  this  press  de- 
moralization has  been  a  great  loss  of  influence  for 
the  daily  paper.  A  diminishing  number  of  people 
now  believe  the  news  as  it  is  given  them,  and  fewer 
still  take  the  unsigned  portions  of  the  newspaper 
as  written  in  good  faith.  And  there  has  been  a 
consequent  enhancement  of  the  importance  of 
signed  journalism.  Men  of  manifest  honesty,  men 
with  names  to  keep  clean,  have  built  up  reputa- 
tions and  influence  upon  the  ruins  of  editorial 
prestige.  The  exploitation  of  newspapers  by  the 
adventurers  of  " private  enterprise"  in  business, 
has  carried  with  it  this  immense  depreciation  in 
the  power  and  honour  of  the  newspaper. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  swamping  of  a 
large  part  of  the  world's  press  by  calculated  false- 
hood and  partizan  propaganda  is  a  temporary 
phase  in  the  development  of  the  print  nexus: 
nevertheless,  it  is  a  very  great  inconvenience  and 
danger  to  the  world.  It  stands  very  much  in  the 
way  of  that  universal  adult  education  which  is  our 
present  concern.  Reality  is  horribly  distorted. 
Men  cannot  see  the  world  clearly  and  they  cannot, 
therefore,  begin  to  think  about  it  rightly. 

We  need  a  much 'better  and  more  trustworthy 
press  than  we  possess.  We  cannot  get  on  to  a 
new  and  better  world  without  it.  The  remedy  is 
to  be  found  not,  I  believe,  in  any  sort  of  Govern- 


190       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

ment  control,  but  in  a  legal  campaign  against  the 
one  thing  harmful — the  lie.  It  would  be  in  the 
interests  of  most  big  advertisers — for  most  big 
advertisement  is  honest ;  it  would  be,  in  the  long- 
run,  in  the  interests  of  the  press,  and  it  would 
mean  an  enormous  step  forward  in  the  general 
mental  clarity  of  the  world  if  a  deliberate  lie, 
whether  in  an  advertisement  or  in  the  news  or 
other  columns  of  the  press,  was  punishable — pun- 
ishable whether  it  did  or  did  not  involve  anything 
that  is  now  an  actionable  damage.  And  it  would 
still  further  strengthen  the  print  nexus  and  clear 
the  mind  of  the  world  if  it  were  compulsory  to 
correct  untrue  statements  in  the  periodical  press, 
whether  they  had  been  made  in  good  faith  or 'not, 
at  least  as  conspicuously  and  lengthily  as  the 
original  statement.  I  can  see  no  impossibility  in 
the  realization  of  either  of  these  proposals,  and 
no  objection  that  a  really  honest  newspaper  pro- 
prietor or  advertiser  could  offer  to  them.  It  would 
make  everyone  careful,  of  course,  but  I  fail  to  see 
any  grievance  in  that.  The  sanitary  effect  upon 
the  festering  disputes  of  our  time  would  be  incal- 
culably great.  It  would  be  like  opening  the  win- 
dows upon  a  stuffy,  overcrowded  and  unventilated 
room  of  disputing  people. 

Given  adequate  laws  to  prevent  the  cornering 
of  paper  or  the  partizan  control  of  the  means  of 
distribution  of  books  and  printed  matter,  I  believe 
that  the  present  freedoms  and  the  unhampered 
individualism  of  the  world  of  thought,  discussion 
and  literary  expression  are  and  must  remain  con- 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       191 

ditions  essential  to  the  proper  growth  and  activity 
of  a  common  world  mind.  On  the  basis  of  that 
sounder  education  I  have  sketched  in  a  preceding 
paper,  there  is  possible  such  an  extension  of  un- 
derstanding, such  an  increase  of  intelligent  co-op- 
erations and  such  a  clarification  of  wills  as  to  dis- 
solve away  half  the  difficulties  and  conflicts  of  the 
present  time  and  to  provide  for  the  other  half 
such  a  power  of  solution  as  we,  in  the  heats,  entan- 
glements and  limitations  of  our  present  igno- 
rance, doubt  and  misinformation  can  scarcely  be- 
gin to  imagine. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  I  have  conveyed  to  you 
in  the  last  two  papers  my  underlying  idea  of  an 
education  not  merely  intensive  but  extensive, 
planned  so  economically  and  so  ably  as  to  reach 
every  man  and  woman  in  the  world. 

It  is  a  dream  not  of  individuals  educated — we 
have  thought  too  much  of  the  individual  educated 
for  the  individual — but  of  a  world  educated  to  a. 
pitch  of  understanding  and  co-operation  far  be- 
yond anything  we  know  of  to-day,  for  the  sake  of 
all  mankind. 

I  have  tried  to  show  that,  given  organization, 
given  the  will  for  it,  such  a  world-wide  education 
is  possible. 

I  wish  I  had  the  gift  of  eloquence  so  that  I 
could  touch  your  wills  in  this  matter.  I  do  not 
know  how  this  world  of  to-day  strikes  upon  you. 
I  am  not  ungrateful  for  the  gift  of  life.  While 
there  is  life  and  a  human  mind,  it  seems  to  me 
there  must  always  be  excitements  and  beauty,  even 


192       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

if  the  excitements  are  fierce  and  the  beauty  terri- 
ble and  tragic.  Nevertheless,  this  world  of  man- 
kind to-day  seems  to  me  to  be  a  very  sinister  and 
dreadful  world.  It  has  come  to  this — that  I  open 
my  newspaper  every  morning  with  a  sinking  heart; 
and  usually  I  find  little  to  console  me.  Every  day 
there  is  a  new  tale  of  silly  bloodshed.  Every  day  I 
read  of  anger  and  hate,  oppression  and  misery 
and  want — stupid  anger  and  oppression,  needless 
misery  and  want — the  insults  and  suspicions  of 
ignorant  men,  and  the  inane  and  horrible  self-sat- 
isfaction of  the  well-to-do.  It  is  a  vile  world  be- 
cause it  is  an  undereducated  world,  unreasonable, 
suspicious,  base  and  ferocious.  The  air  of  our 
lives  is  a  close  and  wrathful  air;  it  has  the  close- 
ness of  a  prison — the  indescribable  offence  of 
crowded  and  restricted  humanity. 

And  yet  I  know  that  there  is  a  way  out. 

Up  certain  steps  there  is  a  door  to  this  dark 
prison  of  ignorance,  prejudice  and  passion  in 
which  we  live — and  that  door  is  only  locked  on  the 
inside.  It  is  within  our  power,  given  the  will  for 
it,  given  the  courage  for  it — it  is  within  our  power 
to  go  out.  The  key  to  all  our  human  disorder  is 
organized  education,  comprehensive  and  univer- 
sal. The  watchword  of  conduct  that  will  clear  up 
all  our  difficulties  is  the  plain  truth.  Rely  upon 
that  watchword,  use  that  key  with  courage  and  we 
can  go  out  of  the  prison  in  which  we  live ;  we  can 
go  right  out  of  the  conditions  of  war,  shortage, 
angry  scrambling,  mutual  thwarting  and  malaise 
and  disease  in  which  we  live ;  we  and  our  kind  can 


COLLEGE,  NEWSPAPER  AND  BOOK       193 

go  out  into  sunlight,  into  a  sweet  air  of  under- 
standing, into  confident  freedoms  and  a  full  crea- 
tive life — for  ever. 

I  do  not  know — I  do  not  dare  to  believe — that 
I  shall  live  to  hear  that  key  grating  in  the  lock. 
It  may  be  our  children  and  our  children's  children 
will  still  be  living  in  this  jail.  But  a  day  will 
surely  come  when  that  door  will  open  wide  and  all 
our  race  will  pass  out  from  this  magic  prison  of 
ignorance,  suspicion  and  indiscipline  in  which  we 
now  all  suffer  together. 


vin 

THE  ENVOY 

^  In  the  preceding  papers  I  have,  with  some  repe- 
tition and  much  stumbling,  set  out  a  fairly  com- 
plete theory  of  what  men  and  women  have  to  do 
at  the  present  time  if  human  life  is  to  go  on  hope- 
fully to  any  great  happiness  and  achievement  in 
the  days  to  come.  Much  of  this  material  was  first 
prepared  to  be  delivered  to  a  lecture  audience,  and 
I  regret  that  ill-health  has  prevented  a  complete 
re-writing  of  these  portions.  There  is  more  of  the 
uplifted  forefinger  and  the  reiterated  point  than 
I  should  have  allowed  myself  in  an  essay.  But 
this  is  a  loss  of  grace  rather  than  of  clearness. 
And  since  I  am  stating  a  case  and  not  offering  the 
reader  anything  professing  to  be  a  literary  work, 
I  shall  not  apologize  for  finally  summing  up  and 
underlining  the  chief  points  of  this  book. 

They  are,  firstly :  that  a  great  change  in  human 
conditions  has  been  brought  about  during  the  past 
century,  and  secondly  that  a  vast  task  of  adapta- 
tion, which  must  be,  initially  and  fundamentally, 
mental  adaptation,  has  to  be  undertaken  by  our 
race.  It  is  a  task  which  politicians,  who  live  from 
day  to  day,  and  statesmen,  who  live  from  event  to 
event,  may  hinder  or  aid  very  greatly,  but  which 

194 


THE  ENVOY  195 

they  cannot  be  expected  to  conduct  or  control. 
Politicians  and  statesmen  perforce  live  and  work 
in  the  scheme  of  ideas  they  find  about  them;  the 
conditions  of  their  activities  are  made  for  them. 
They  can  be  compelled  by  the  weight  of  public 
opinion  to  help  it,  but  the  driving  force  for  this 
great  task  must  come  not  from  official  sources  but 
from  the  steadfast  educational  pressure  of  a  great 
and  growing  multitude  of  convinced  people.  In 
times  of  fluctuation  and  dissolving  landmarks^  the 
importance  of  the  teacher — using  the  word  in  its 
widest  sense — rises  with  the  progressive  dissolu- 
tion of  the  established  order. 

The  creative  responsibility  for  the  world  to-day 
passes  steadily  into  the  hands  of  writers  and 
school  teachers,  students  of  social  and  economic 
science,  professors  and  poets,  editors  and  jour- 
nalists, publishers  and  newspaper  proprietors, 
preachers,  every  sort  of  propagandist  and  every 
sort  of  disinterested  person  who  can  give  time  and 
energy  to  the  reconstruction  of  the  social  idea. 
Human  life  will  continue  to  be  more  and  more 
dangerously  chaotic  until  a  world  social  idea  crys- 
tallizes out.  That — and  no  existing  institution 
and  no  current  issue — is  the  primary  concern  of 
the  present  age. 

We  need,  therefore,  before  all  other  sorts  of 
organization,  educational  organizations;  we  need, 
before  any  other  sort  of  work,  work  of  education 
and  enlightenment;  we  need  everywhere  active 
societies  pressing  for  a  better,  more  efficient  con- 
duct of  public  schooling,  for  a  wider,  more  enlight- 


196       THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

ening  school  curriculum,  for  a  world-wide  linking 
up  of  educational  systems,  for  a  ruthless  subordi- 
nation of  naval,  military  and  court  expenditure 
to  educational  needs,  and  for  a  systematic  dis- 
couragement of  mischief-making  between  nation 
and  nation  and  race  and  race  and  class  and  class. 
I  could  wish  to  see  Educational  Societies,  organ- 
ized as  such,  springing  up  everywhere,  watching 
local  bodies  in  order  to  divert  economies  from  the 
educational  starvation  of  a  district  to  other  less 
harmful  saving;  watching  for  obscurantism  and 
reaction  and  mischievous  nationalist  teaching  in 
the  local  schools  and  colleges  and  in  the  local 
press ;  watching  members  of  parliament  and  con- 
gressmen for  evidences  of  educational  good-will 
or  malignity ;  watching  and  getting  control  of  the 
administration  of  public  libraries ;  assisting,  when 
necessary,  in  the  supply  of  sound  literature  'in 
their  districts ;  raising  funds  for  invigorating  edu- 
cational propaganda  in  poor  countries  like  China 
and  in  atrociously  educated  countries  like  Ireland, 
and  corresponding  with  kindred  societies  through- 
out the  world.  I  believe  such  societies  would 
speedily  become  much  more  influential  than  the 
ordinary  political  party  clubs  and  associations 
that  now  use  up  so  much  human  energy  in  the 
western  communities.  Subordinating  all  vulgar 
political  considerations  to  educational  develop- 
ment as  the  supreme  need  in  the  world's  affairs, 
even  quite  small  societies  could  exercise  a  power- 
ful decisive  voice  in  a  great  number  of  political 
contests.    And  an  educational  movement  is  more 


THE  ENVOY  197 

tenacious  than  any  other  sort  of  social  or  political 
movement  whatever.  It  trains  its  adherents. 
What  it  wins  it  holds. 

I  know  that  in  thns  putting  all  the  importance 
upon  educational  needs  at  the  present  time  I  shall 
seem  to  many  readers  to  be  ignoring  quite  ex- 
cessively the  profound  racial,  social  and  economic 
conflicts  that  are  in  progress.  I  do.  I  believe  we 
shall  never  get  on  with  human  affairs  until  we  do 
ignore  them.  I  offer  no  suggestion  whatever  as  to 
what  sides  people  should  take  in  such  an  issue  as 
that  between  France  and  Germany  or  between 
Sinn  Fein  and  the  British  Government,  or  in  the 
class  war.  I  offer  no  such  suggestion  because  I 
believe  that  all  these  conflicts  and  all  such  current 
conflicts  are  so  irrational  and  destructive  that  it 
is  impossible  for  a  sane  man  who  wishes  to  serve 
the  world  to  identify  himself  with  either  side  in 
any  of  them.  These  conflicts  are  mere  aspects  of 
the  gross  and  passionate  stupidity  and  ignorance 
and  sectionalism  of  our  present  world.  The  class 
war,  the  push  for  and  the  resistance  to  some  vague 
reorganization  called  the  Social  Eevolution — such 
things  are  the  natural  inevitable  result  of  the  sor- 
did moral  and  intellectual  muddle  of  our  common 
ideas  about  property.  The  capitalist,  the  em- 
ployer, the  property-owning  class,  as  a  class,  have 
neither  the  intelligence  nor  the  conscience  to  com- 
prehend any  moral  limitations,  any  limitations 
whatever  but  the  strong  arm  of  the  law,  upon  what 
they  do  with  their  property.  Their  black  and  ob- 
stinate  ignorance,    the   clumsy   adventurousness 


198      THE  SALVAGING  OF  CIVILIZATION 

they  call  private  enterprise,  their  unconscious  in- 
solence to  poor  people,  their  stupidly  conspicuous 
self-indulgence,  produce  as  a  necessary  result  the 
black  hatred  of  the  employed  and  the  expropri- 
ated. On  one  side  we  have  greed,  insensibility  and 
incapacity,  on  the  other  envy  and  suffering  stung 
to  vindictive  revolt ;  on  neither  side  light  nor  gen- 
erosity nor  creative  will.  Neither  side  has  any 
power  to  give  us  any  reality  we  need.  Neither 
side  is  more  than  a  hate  and  an  aggression.  How 
can  one  take  sides  between  them? 

The  present  system,  unless  it  can  develop  a  bet- 
ter intelligence  and  a  better  heart,  is  manifestly 
destined  to  foster  fresh  wars  and  to  continue  wast- 
ing what  is  left  of  the  substance  of  mankind,  until 
absolute  social  disaster  overtakes  us  all.  And 
manifestly  the  revolutionary  communist,  at  his 
present  level  of  education,  has  neither  the  plans 
nor  the  capacity  to  substitute  any  more  efficient 
system  for  this  crazy  edifice  of  ill-disciplined  pri- 
vate enterprise  that  is  now  blundering  to  destruc- 
tion. But  at  a  higher  level  of  intelligence,  at  a 
level  at  which  it  is  possible  to  define  the  limitations 
of  private  property  clearly  and  to  ensure  a  really 
loyal  and  effectual  co-operation  between  individual 
and  state,  this  issue — this  wholly  destructive  con- 
flict between  the  property  manipulator  and  the 
communist  fanatic  which  is  now  rapidly  wreck- 
ing our  world — disappears.  It  disappears  as 
completely  as  the  causes  of  a  murderous  conflict 
between  two  drunken  men  will  disappear  when 


THE  ENVOY  199 

they  are  separated  and  put  under  a  stream  of  clear 
cold  water. 

So  it  is  that,  in  spite  of  their  apparent  urgency, 
I  ask  the  reader  to  detach  himself  from  these  pres- 
ent conflicts  of  national  politics,  of  political  par- 
ties and  of  the  class  war  as  completely  as  he  can ;, 
or,  if  he  cannot  detach  himself  completely,  then 
to  play  such  a  part  in  them,  regardless  of  any 
other  consideration,  as  may  be  most  conducive  to 
a  wide-thinking,  wide-ranging  education  upon 
which  we  can  base  a  new  world  order.  A  resolute 
push  for  quite  a  short  period  now  might  recon- 
struct the  entire  basis  of  our  collective  human 
life. 

In  this  book  I  have  tried  to  show  what  form 
that  push  should  take,  to  show  that  it  has  a  reason- 
able hope  of  an  ultimate  success,  and  that  unless 
it  is  made,  the  outlook  for  mankind  is  likely  to 
become  an  entirely  dismal  prospect.  I  put  these 
theses  before  the  reader  for  his  consideration. 
They  are  not  discursive  criticisms  of  life,  not  hap- 
hazard grumblings  at  our  present  discontents, 
they  are  offered  as  the  fundamental  propositions 
of  an  ordered  constructive  project  in  which  he  can 
easily  find  a  part  to  play  commensurate  with  his 
ability  and  opportunities. 


